My Mom and Dad and Sister and Sister’s boyfriend came over today. Mostly they came to see Roby, which is fair enough. But they also came to paint this tee pee. It was given to my aunt Tina in the early nineties by my parents, but her kids, my cousins, are now grown and don’t need a tee pee this small. So she gav eit back, but it was black, so we painted it. A few of us did thumbnail sketches but we ended up doing something simple: clouds. A few of the clouds were shaped like animals, but most of them were shaped like clouds. They started big at the bottom and got smaller and smaller towards the top, to affect distance or some such artistic nonsense. 

We listened to Sam Cooke while we painted. A Sam Cooke record that was given to me for Christmas or a Birthday by Roby’s namesake, David. 

It occured to me that Roby would never enjoy the pleasure of being given this teepee, it would just sort of emerge into her experience the way this house will, the way we will. There’ll be no hulabaloo of being given this gift, it’s just a treasure that’ll always have been there. 

Just like the Sam Cooke record. 
It made me thing of all these treasures I hold, the ones I counted to one hundred a few weeks or months ago, I don’t know, time is weird. 

While we were painting our blue was running low so I grabbed a little ceramic pitcher and added a few tablespoons of water to the mason jars full of paint my sister had mixed. 

This pitcher is a special one. I hardly ever use it because it’s a bit too big for maple syrup, a little too small for water, and I don’t put cream in my coffee. 

It’s a romulus pitcher. I have no idea how old it is but it’s not something they’re in the habit of selling. It was tucked away on some shelf for seconds and I had to convicne Ikuzi to sell it to me. I have a few things like that, things I’ve had to convince him to sell me, they are my favorite things that I own from him, or from anyone. 

There’s the cup/bowls that Ikzui throws and Jeanne trims, the same ones that she paints. The most special of these has been painted with green and red glaze for flower petals. I’ve never seen them produce anything with multi-color flowers on it before, or since. 

I have a large serving dish with a little foot and tall, angular lips. It has the black finish on the outside but retains a cream-colored glaze on the inside so I can eat out of it. The other bowls are more for display, and so do not have the inside glaze. 

There are a few more that I could likely recall if I went downstairs and looked, but there are still more that I covet from here. In particular there is a single butter-bell, a test piece. He said it was hard to make and he doesn’t want to make another. Every single time I am invited up into their kitchen I comment on it and ask for one. 

I have done this for over a decade. 

If I ever get my hands on that butter dish I will be so pleased every single time I get to use it.