Man plans. God laughs.

Walking into the studio, unwrapping the scarf he’d gotten himself for Christmas last week, he asked, out of deeply ingrained habit now, “How many cups have you finished today?” 

He did not walk over to look in the exhibit space. He did not look at the shelving holding cups just out of the kiln. He did not look at the glazing table for cups with glaze drying. (Really if there were any not yet in the kiln, there was going to be trouble.) All those things were verboten. He was permitted to ask, ‘How many cups did you make today.?” The other acts produced too much stress.

To be honest, it took several months before the stress of the challenge set in. The early months were spent exploring form and function and telling herself that she was honing the skills needed to produce in art, real art, in the quantity required. And then emotion kicked in. And kicked in hard.

Late in 2020, she’d accepted a grant. Fashioned somewhat along the lines of great art projects the world over and through time immemorial. Not to make one piece. Not to make one arrangement. But to make a monumental piece of art that would speak volumes. Think of the installation of thousands of ceramic poppies in London Tower. Think of the terra cotta warriors. So many individual items. One message. But, for this, it had had to be started and finished in one year. Studio door opened on January 1, 2021 and closed on December 31, 2021. Exhibit space had been created and provided adjacent to the studio. Installation was an ongoing part of the project.

She’d put the application in for the grant on a whim. She hadn’t even mentioned it to him. Moving to Seattle for the year was definitely not part of their plan for 2021. But, then again, 2020 had shown us all that any expectation that plans will hold is fools gold. Plan all you want. Then, when life happens, figure out what you’re going to have to do instead. Planning may help you bounce back from thinks like COVID or transforming your small business into an online business overnight or winning a grant that upends life, but very few plans actually come to fruition. At least not recently.

So - 2020 was a gem. 2021 has been a different kind of gem, he thought, looking at the screen of his phone with the countdown clock showing only hours left in 2021. These countdown clocks were popular for the train wreck that was 2020. Most of the world isn’t using one for 2021. He is. It’s been another hell fo a year. At least the vaccines took hold and society started to rebound. Turned out not to matter for her. She spent all the time in her studio mostly alone anyway. He took care of the business, himself, the house plants, and feeding her. And not causing her stress. He was in charge of that too. 

She was in charge of finishing 6 pots today. That’s all she had left to complete and place in the installation. Should be manageable. But she had been working such long hours for so many of these last weeks that anything was possible. He was walking on thin ice here.

Nonetheless - after 364 days of the freaking grant project - he asked the only question he is allowed to ask. The answer came. Quietly. Meekly. “Four. So far. What time is it?”

“Four. So far.”

“So I have 8 hours.”

“A little less. yes.”

Silence. He knew to follow with silence. And the cup of tea. In a cardboard cup. No ceramic mug for her. Seems odd given how much she loves everything made of clay and how many cups she’s made this year. Somehow the cardboard cup of tea ties her back to the rest of the free world that can’t survive without disposable cups of caffeine in one form or another.

She starts talking. These last six. They feel hard. They’re the young. I couldn’t face them earlier. But, I’m finding it really hard to face them now. Maybe it’s better, I have no choice now. I have to face them and finish them. Should be done with these last two in about an hour or so. I’ll definitely make it.

3652 cups. One cup for every person reported to have died from COVID on December 31, 2020. This was a visual marker of the loss we suffered. The number went higher in that awful winter fo 2021. But the project started Jan 1, 2021. So the marker was laid down with the December 31 number.

And to show balance and honor, each cup has a place and an age. In March, there was an article about the project. Once that got around, family and friends of people who’d died on that date started to send her information about their loved one. Many included info about the caregivers. Nurses, doctors, aides, family members.  

The weight was almost unbearable. April was hard. Music helped. Lots of classical music to fill the studio and keep her mind stringing along to the notes. And each cup is unique. As unique as each person. Each cup is a variation. Each cup contains a number and a place.

There are too many cups. She will finish. And then she will rest. Until January 1 at noon. When the exhibit space will be open to the public. They’ve been selling timed tickets for weeks already and it is booked for weeks. She will be there when it opens. There’s a ceremony. A big pair of scissors and a big ribbon. She knows there’s an outfit with no clay dust on it waiting for her to wear. He picked it out for her weeks ago. She asked for something that covered all of her. Turtleneck. Long pants. Boots. Stylish hoodie. Just clothes so she can feel covered up. Because she is dreading showing the exhibit to the world and, especially to the family and friends of those loved ones who died on December 31.

For a year, these people, these cups, have been hers. She has dreamed, shaped, formed, fired and fired again each one. She has ruined too many in ways large and small just to come out with 3562 that can stand stead for the dead.

They are on the floor. They fill the floor. There is a path through them. A meandering path that requires you to twist and turn through them all. Almost like one of those old labyrinths you find in medieval churchyards in the south of France. She went there once. Years and years ago. A lifetime ago. She skipped through the labyrinth then. She didn’t understand the solemnity. She was just a college kid on a semester abroad. Now, after living with the dead for a year, she gets the solemnity. And this exhibit will require visitors to walk through slowly. Slow enough, she hopes, to feel the individuals lost.

“How will I face them tomorrow?”

“Who?”

“The families of the cups. So many of the family and friends of the people who died are coming tomorrow. I keep getting all these notes about it.”

“How are you getting notes? I thought you deleted all the social media apps from your phone to focus this last month?”

“I did, but I check every now and again on the office computer. Just to keep up. In case I miss new information about someone I haven’t done yet.” She looks at him now for the first time. She is the picture of exhaustion everywhere except her eyes. She’s lost weight. Her skin is pale from so much time indoors. Her clothes, her hair, her glasses are all dusted with studio residue. She has lustre on her cheekbone. As if she is highlighting herself. But, of course, she is not. She probably doesn’t even realize it is there. She is the epitome of focus. That’s what you see in her eyes. They gleam.  

And when he sees that. He knows. He will support her in this, through this, in the aftermath of this. In that way, it is nice that it has a deadline. It’s like knowing that a presidency ends on January 20. Hard though the going might have been. There is an end date.

“You can face them. They will love you. They already o. They will love the cups you made for their loved ones. Because you stopped and cared for these few people out of the many many hundreds of thousands. And, if you want, I will stay nearby. Just give me the signal and I will come over.”

“Signal?” She asks, still applying lustre to a cup. Head bowed, tiny little brush. Gold lustre sweeping the sparkle of a life captured on a cup.

“Just scratch your nose. How about that? I’ll be there for you.” And he will. He knows he will. She knows he will. After all, he barely blinked an eye when she told him she’d gotten the grant, a grant she hadn’t thought she’d ever get and so had never even mentioned to him.

She has plans to rest for a month and then to start a project with no deadline. He has plans too. But he has learned that those plans are noting but fools gold. Only tomorrow will show what he will be doing tomorrow.