ABSTRACT
She remembers now seeing her grandmother seated at this very wheel when Marcella was a
small child. She used to visit during holidays and remembers spending time watching and
helping her grandmother complete her daily chores. Oh, how she had loved the routine and
rhythm of the farm when she was a child! Feeding the hens, milking, changing hay, cleaning
yards, pulling up weeds, and harvesting potatoes and beans and carrots – she had loved the
feeling of one task leading naturally to the next as the day gradually took shape. But she
remembers most of all watching her grandmother, eyes focused keenly on her work, bent
over this very pottery wheel. She remembers the gentle click-clack sound of the wheel as her
grandmother worked the treadle to turn it. Faster, faster, faster her foot would move. Faster,
faster, faster the wheel would spin. Marcella remembers now how her grandmother always
had a tub of water nearby and that she would dip her hands into it to keep them wet as she
worked the clay.
