When I first starting painting ceramics around 10 years ago, one of the first things I made was a set of coffee mugs, which are sitting on a shelf in my kitchen.
This set has special significance to me because it’s part of how I discovered a passion for art.
Because I love words, I use them in my art; and I painted a word at the bottom of each cup. As I painted them, I imagined myself drinking my coffee every day—and how I would always remember these mugs as something I associated with healing from cancer.
In our house every single morning, V makes the coffee. When I get up, I pour it into one of these mugs.
No—-not THOSE mugs.
These mugs.
These are the cups everyone has someplace; the ones you get as souvenirs at events or parties or on trips; plus cups I painted that I don’t love like the set on the shelf. Some of them are even chipped.
Yet these are the mugs I actually use every single day.
If there’s anything I learned from cancer, it’s to live every single moment in the present—-because it’s truly all we have. So you’d think I would know enough to wake up and smell the coffee—and finally pour it into the mugs where it belongs.
My friends used to claim I had the world’s most tasteless mug collection. But I knew they were only jealous of my Prince Charles and Lady Diana royal wedding mugs.
Those wedding mugs would be collectors’ items. Our mug collection isn’t even interesting enough to be tasteless.