Celebrating Parents' Achievements

Most of the potters I share studio time with these days are women, but there is one man in our wheel studio. When I mentioned one day that I was spending a lot of time this winter getting rid of things - including my mother's papers - he looked up from the pot he was working on.

I have boxes of my father's stuff in the garage, he said. I don't know what to do with it all. In particular, I don't know what to do with his military medals. He was a US marine - and very proud of it. I got rid of his two guns when he died, but I still have his medals in a box in the garage...

Marie Kondo's solution might be to ask if these medals "sparked joy." If so, he might want to frame them, making an attractive piece of wall art - together, perhaps, with a photograph of his father in his uniform... If they didn't spark joy, maybe someone else would enjoy them - a collector of military medals or perhaps some member of the family...

There are shadow boxes in various sizes at Michael's craft store  - like the one on the left - so it could even be a do-it-yourself project.

Reflecting on this brought to mind my mother's B. Ed degree, rolled up in a cylinder somewhere. She never framed it, but she had worked so hard to earn it. Since she had only done one year of teacher training before beginning her career, earning a bachelor's degree involved spending many summers away from home at "summer school," where she took two university courses intensively for a period of six weeks.

Maybe I should also do something to celebrate her efforts... If not by framing her degree - we have so little wall space - perhaps by putting it into a portfolio, where it could be looked at.