I worked at a ceramic shop for three years soon after I married my husband. It was a lovely experience. I’d meet plenty of new faces and see peoples’ personalities painted on their masterpieces. One day, an older fellow came in with a giant ceramic salad bowl with a bit of unfired glaze on it. He explained he bought it a year prior from our location, but had a stroke that left his hand permanently shaky. He wasn’t able to continue painting it. He asked if he could pay the location to have the workers paint it as he directed them. My boss said yes and figured out the costs.

I had begun making art professionally, so I was one of the few selected to work on it. During that time, he’d tell us his life story. Turns out he was a skilled painter that can’t make the art he used to. He showed me his work, it was stunning. I held back sobs until I returned home to my husband, as I couldn’t imagine not making art anymore and what this man was going through. 

The next time I saw him, I saw his car parked outside the shop–a mustang covered in velvet–the same car I often saw down the street I lived on. I brought up that we likely lived on the same street, he asked my last name, I gave him my last name, as he wouldn’t know my husband’s. (At the time, my husband and I lived in my parents’ basement apartment). When I told him he said, “I know your dad! I used to hang out at his grandparents’ drycleaners. It was the bomb!” He proceeded to tell me tons of information about my great grandparents and grandparents. This was soon after I had lost my final living connection to my grandparents, my great grandma, so I couldn’t get any of their stories from them anymore. My parents’ families grew up two states away, and this man happened to move onto my street and ended up in the ceramic shop I worked at. I wouldn’t have ever predicted someone in my entire state would know my grandparents.

That time I cried in front of the artist who no longer painted as he instructed my hand and told my grandparents' story.