During Christmas time, when our Falls City Community Art Gallery was located in the Lower level of Founders Square, local arts and craft shops donated prizes for our “Most Creative Christmas Tree Ornament Contest” for children.
When visitors walked in our door, I would hand them a paper to vote for their favorite artist from among those whose works were displayed and also explain the ornament competition.
After I spoke of the contest to a mother and daughter who had just walked into the Gallery, the mother shook her head in a negative manner and scrunched up her face as if tasting a sour lemon.
“She doesn’t make stuff.” she said.
I looked at the child who appeared to be about seven or eight years old. The girl shrugged in agreement.
“Oh.” I tucked my head in a “that’s fine manner” trying to hide my shock.
During the Christmas season, many memories come floating back to me and that little girl shrugging her shoulder is one that haunts me. I wonder what happened to her and if she ever suspected that I cried for her after she left that day.
I grew up in a world where I delighted in “making stuff” and up until that day in the Gallery, I thought everyone did.
When my children were small they would receive bars of clay for Christmas and spend hours around the kitchen table “making stuff”. Whoever lived in a high chair would be given a plastic knife. That person learned to “roll snakes” with chubby hands and then cut them up to pat back into a ball and roll again.
I wish that little girl could have sat beside my daughter at our kitchen table. She might have learned to see a world that working with hands fosters. She might have learned that anything is possible because YOU CAN MAKE STUFF HAPPEN.