The Story of the Plate - a meditation on attachments and transformations on the occasion of Arta's birthday

Today is my mother's birthday: May 8, 1940.  That makes her 79! In the fashion that is typical of Arta, here was the email note she wrote to her children earlier in the week on the question of birthday presents: 

 "If anyone wants to give me a gift, then here is what I would like.  Something about you, on the blog.  Where you have been, what you are watching, what you are doing, reading, enjoying, dreading? Something you wish would happen to you but hasn’t?  Anything you wish to post on the family blogspot would work for me."

A piece of writing?!  THAT is what my mom wants?  Writing on what I have been doing, reading, enjoying, dreading?  There is so much to choose from.  

Sealskin barette, beaded box, my little pony, pine needle rattle, wizard coins

Maybe something about law?

Today is class 2 in the 4-week intensive that Val Napoleon and I are co-teaching during May ("Indigenous Law: Research, Method and Practice").   

As I result, my head has been wrapped up in questions about Law, and the stories we tell about the ways that we live law, and the ways that law shapes us.  

What things does a "Notice Board" help me notice?

This is just such a story.  At least, I believe it to be a story about law. I leave Arta to make the connections.


To set it up, I can say that yesterday, I had a visit from my 6-year-old friend Mylah (the daughter of my colleague Sarah Morales).  

I love having visits from young people.  

What gets "filed" on the side of a Filing Cabinet?

You always learn something.   

One thing you learn is that adult conversations and adult spaces can often be boring to younger folks.  

At least, that was true when Alex and Duncan were little people (rather than the towering menfolk they have become), so I always tried to keep some 'stuff' in my office that might be available for small people to discover, to play with, or to talk about.  

Do walls do more than hold up ceilings?

Maybe it means my office space is somewhat eclectic (or chaotic, or crowded), but so be it.  There are all sorts of objects there that can open space for conversation.  

When Mylah arrived the other day, she asked if I would tell her again "The Story of the Plate".  

Hanging on the Wall...

Huh?  It took me a moment to remember that, on her last visit, I had told her about one particular piece of art that hangs on my wall.  

I had just not thought of what I had told her as being a fully formed "Story", until she asked for a re-telling.  

So... here is the version of the story that I told Myla.

THE PLATE - A Story of Attachment and Reattachment

This dirt is delicious!

Once upon a time, there was woman who worked at a law school in Fredericton.  She loved her job teaching law.  But she also loved mud and dirt.   Really loved it: loved to play in it, to dig her hands in it, and (when she was little) even to eat it.  

Though she slowly grew out of her love of chewing on rocks, she continued to love mud.  So, when she started teaching law, she decided she would also take pottery classes, so she could still play in the mud, and make things.  


One of things she made in her 1997 class was a plate! It was so much fun to make.  She got to roll snake shapes, and throw lumps of clay, and pinch and press things, and then stick it all together.  The plate was maybe (definitely!) a bit too big, and too heavy, but she loved it. The clay was a rich earthy brown, and the glaze colour was full of blues and greens.   She felt quite attached to her plate.  She brought it with her to the law school, and sometimes, on days that were special, she would bring cookies to class for the students, and serve them on her plate.  

Life was good.

A close up of the edge of the plate

In 1998, the woman had a baby.  What an adventure.  Now she too had a little person living in her house, a little person who also liked to explore things, and sometimes eat dirt.  

In 1999, as the little boy got bigger, he would sometimes come to work with her.  He would occasionally take a nap while she was working, but more frequently, he liked to explore.  

There were lots of books in his mother's office, but they were mostly boring:  too many words, not enough pictures, and they didn't taste all that good.  He kept exploring, and he saw a green plate sitting on a low shelf.  It was shiny, and had lots of textures on it.   

He tried to pick it up, but it was very heavy and it slipped out of his hands.  With a deep "thunk"ing noise, the plate fell down, and broke in two pieces, right at the little boy's feet.    

He was more startled than hurt, but he was also sad.  He knew that his mother had told him not to touch the plate.  He knew that his mother loved the plate, and he felt sad that he had broken it.  He let out a wail. 

A Play in Two Parts (or rather, a Plate in Two-Parts)

The woman was, truth be told, also a little bit sad that the plate had broken.  It had been fun to use.  But she did not want her little boy to feel bad.  After all, things break all the time.  That's just life.  And indeed, the woman found herself remembering how she had accidentally broken some beautiful pink earrings of her own mother's when she had been a little girl.  

As the little boy was crying, and the woman was trying to comfort him, the woman's colleague David Townsend walked past the door.  David saw the broken plate, and the sad little boy, and told them that he had some very powerful glue at home, and that he could glue the plate back together, re-attaching the pieces that had been broken!

The woman thought about it.  Should they try to repair the crack so that the plate could retain its function?  Even though David said the glue was strong, she also knew that the plate was probably too heavy to really be repaired.  And that crumbs would gather in the cracks.   And that the glue would be a reminder of the break.  


And then she started wondering about why she was so attached to the plate in the first place.  Was it because of its utility? Its function?  Its ability to carry cookies? 

She realized that she didn't need this particular plate to carry cookies; other plates could fill that function. And even though her plate was in two pieces, she still felt attached it. It continued to be capable of carrying things -- memories!  Memories of the feeling of the clay in her hands,  memories of time shared with friends in pottery class, memories of the ways earth and glaze change in the heat of the kiln, memories of a little boy playing in his mother's office, memories of transformations.  

Hooks attached!

So maybe the plate was not really 'broken', but was only 'changed.'  What had been one, was now two.  Her little boy, in the dropping the plate, had made visible another side of its worth. The plate had changed from being primarily a functional object into one of deeply aesthetic value, a tool for thinking, a hook for memory.

She asked David if he could use the glue to attach two hooks to the back of the plate, so she could hang the two pieces on the wall.

Yes.  

Transformations, and attachments.  

Since then, the broken plate has hung on the wall of the woman's office, first in Fredericton, and now in Victoria.    

She did get a label made for the wall, so the piece could be appropriately named. She did wonder how best to name it.  She settled on this: 

Johnson, "Mother & Child" (1997-1999)  

The woman liked the title.  

It was ambiguous. 

It could be that "Mother & Child" was a way of describing the object: two pieces, both related to each other in an intimate way.  But the phrase could equally refer to mother and child as co-creators, with the date marking the time period of the collaborative process (from the time the plate came out of the kiln, to the time the boy dropped it on the floor).  

The ambiguity gives her pleasure.  

In her legal theory moments, she thought about giving it another title, something like "Postmodern Post-partum".  But that would be a story for another day.

Happy birthday Arta.  I hope the day and year is full of stories of law and relationship, of attachments, ruptures, reattachments and tranformations.  Life is good.