Playing Dirty

I play dirty. It’s no wonder my exasperated mother nicknamed me Grubfingers during my baby years in the early 1970s.

”We’d give you an Oreo while you sat in your high chair, and you’d suck on the cookie part and smear it all over your face,” she’d say, shaking her head and taking a swig of her Tab.

My older-by-eighteen-months sister wanted to be a princess. She relished having a pretty outfit, loved having elaborate braids or pigtails, and was very concerned with acting like a refined young lady. If you took your eyes off me for a second, I’d be eating toilet paper. Seriously.

A little bit feral, no?

Still, it was the 70s, and we spent our days climbing trees, digging in the dirt, and creating adventures for ourselves. My sister managed to do this in a tidy way, but I always ended up looking like Pigpen, from Peanuts.

A few months ago, while I was merrily going about my usual chaotic glazing process during my class at Santa Rosa Junior College, my friend Ray stood by with a bemused look on his face, watching me stick my whole hand in the bucket of glaze, and then drip my way over to the work surface without batting an eye. “I can see what kind of a messy kid you were,” he told me.

It made me smile, because it felt like a validation that my inner messy kid is still refusing to allow anything to slow down her creative flow.