Little Reminders

Sometimes your gut instincts are off.
Take Wolfgang for instance.

When his mother called me to ask if I’d give her 10 yr old son private lessons, I could feel the cringe in my gut. I heard “10 yr old” and thought of past, less than desirable situations. Kids- they get bored, I get irritated….
I was going to have to disappoint this mother and say no. Somehow I didn’t. I said sure. I’d give it a try, one hour with Wolfgang. “But,” I said, “Remember, very few kids that age have the patience to really make any jewelry.”
She said, much to my relief, “OH! I don’t care if he makes anything! Just show him your studio, your tools. Talk to him about what you do. That’d be great! He just loves working with wire and little things he finds.” Sounded like me at a young age.

So in walked Wolfgang.
It has been a revelation.
Because of him, I now have permission for an hour every other week, to melt stuff, squish stuff, hammer it back out, melt it again, pour it into water, and discover all over again the magic of the words “what if”.

Wolfgang each time says, “I don’t want to leave.”
He makes me laugh and knows so much geeky cool stuff. He tells me about TV shows I have never seen like Myth Busters and how to make a “Bagdad Battery” out of an oil jar, lemon juice, metal and such. One day he was sifting through my box of old coins. He suddenly exclaimed, “This is a guinea!” I thought, it is?! What’s a guinea look like and what’s it doing in there? As I was coming over to see he said, “Oh its just a copy.” I thought how’d he know that?! I picked it up. It was stamped COPY… duh!

The other day Wolfgang told me with complete sincerity, “You have the greatest job, ever!”
You know that is a very good thing to hear. In this time when money is so tight, the gas pump is painful, galleries aren't selling anything, I may have to give up my studio and downsize…
I spend too many precious moments in a day just trying to hang on to hope and not fear the future.
I almost got tears in my eyes.
I do Wolfgang. I have the coolest job ever. And I forget it way too much.
I get to melt stuff and squish stuff and hammer stuff and melt it again…
I just gotta remember that. Wolfgang came just in the nick of time to remind me.