Self Comfort

I went into the cellar the other day to look for something that I can't remember now.  As I searched through the mess, I happened to look inside a wicker waste basket that was molding on the damp dirt floor.  There I saw this heap of clay heads I had stored some time ago.  I made them in a group project with some fellow artists years ago.  The therapist I had at the time (I always have a therapist) had impressed me with her description of self-comfort. A baby learns this skill early on provided its mother lets it.  I thought about it for some time, and made this visual representation of somebody trying to comfort herself......a skill I had not learned.  I am much better at it now than I used to be, though there are some circumstances that defy comforting..........by self or anybody else.  I brought these pitiful faces upstairs, more to rescue them than anything else.  I can't predict their future, but for now they are, still in the wastebasket, on the kitchen floor near my cookbooks.

I also found a small vase made out of terra cotta , on its side under the water pipes.  It still held some chopsticks, and I remember it sitting on the kitchen counter in our house on Parkview Avenue.  I cooked  Chinese food often and all four of us ate it with chopsticks.  The kids could use them as naturally as they used spoons.  I brought that upstairs, too.  Cooking was a big hobby of mine for years and I spent hours experimenting with recipes, searching for little known spices or other ingredients and creating wonderful meals.  I made everything from scratch, including bread, pasta, and complicated deserts. Now after I go to the trouble of removing a pop tart from its wrapper I don't have enough interest to bother to toast it.