How’s that for an attention-grabbing headline?
We have been hosting Kathy’s Aunt Linda since Sunday night, and although we have been enjoying playing games, reminiscing, shopping, and eating together, we were most excited about a special outing which Kathy cooked up for last night. . . but which she wanted to remain a surprise to Linda. So Kathy’s family has been referring to it as our upcoming Night at the Strip Club. Linda, of course, is no one’s fool and was pretty certain that we weren’t taking her to a strip club – but if not a strip club, then where? She spent most of Monday and all day Tuesday grilling us with a blizzard of questions. Is is a murder mystery party? Indoor bungee jumping? Dinner theater? Comedy Improv? Wine Tasting? Spelling Bee? Dog Show? Opera? Square Dancing? Or maybe one of those exercises in idiocy in which 200 partially-clad morons go running into the freezing waters of Lake Michigan? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, and no.
In fact, the mystery outing was to a place in downtown Racine called The Hot Shop where people get to do their own glass-blowing under the close supervision of a master glass blower. Kathy had been there twice and knew that this was something that Linda would absolutely love – and her dad, Polly and Mark as well. So we had the place reserved for the six of us from 6 to 9 pm – and you get to bring whatever food, treats and beverages you like. You’re given a quick introduction to the basics of glass-blowing – plus a lecture in safety – and then one by one each of you gets to create either a glass ornament or a paper weight, for which you get to choose the colors and the basic style, while everyone else observes and cheers you on.
Working with glass, especially when you don’t really know what you’re doing, is a lot like Jazz. You might go into it with some vague notion of where you want to go, but there is no telling exactly where you’ll eventually end up. . . but that’s okay. It’s not about polished perfection. It’s about possibilities and unpredictability.
As expected, Mark was the most assured of the six of us- thanks in part to his background in stain glass art, but also because of his exceptional artistic eye and the way he manages to do just about everything well. Polly did great as well, with that amazing meticulousness of hers. Linda had wanted to do this for some time now (there’s a similar place in St. Louis) and really relished the chance to do this at last and threw herself into it with great gusto. And Kathy’s dad actually volunteered to go first, which says a lot about him, and he did a wonderful job. As for me, I was the big klutz of the night in almost every way. . . so much so that as my piece was being finished, instead of saying “this is going to be great!” as she said with everyone else’s. she could only manage to say “I have no idea what this is going to look like.” And I certainly had to agree- the color changes dramatically during the annealing process (whatever the heck that is) but I can only hope that the glob of melted glass on the end of that rod which looked for all the world like a gigantic sun-dried tomato with a couple of prunes stuck in the middle of it will emerge from the annealing cabinet as a lovely paper weight. And if it does, I would consider that to be the last Christmas miracle of the season!
By the way, Kathy didn’t get to make anything last night – thanks to seemed at the time to be a nasty stomach flu that struck her like a ton of bricks halfway through the evening. (She asked Mark to make her piece in her place.) And by the next morning, we’d found out that similar misery had struck Polly and Lorelai and Linda as well, making this look a whole lot more like food poisoning than the flu, since we all ate at the same place for lunch. (I would think that maybe we were being punished for joking about Strip Clubs for the last three days, except that Kathy’s dad and Mark and I emerged completely unscathed. So scratch that theory.) But the teacher at the Hot Shop earned extra points for being incredibly kind and understanding to Kathy- and as fun as the glass-blowing was, I think the Kindness shown to my wife was the highlight of the evening.