For Auralie (1950-2020)
With heart and hands, my sister sits at a wheel, spins porcelain clay, as if by magic, into tiny delicate bowls, glazes her vessels in colors of the sea, fires them with a blaze of passion, then lays them out like sea glass on the beach for family and friends.
I can’t fit my sister into a poem, or paragraph, into one of her perfectly-formed bowls. Her spirit is far too big to be contained, her laughter as boisterous as waves thrashing the shore, her sparkle, brilliant like sunlight dancing across her childhood cove.
But I will try. I will wrap my arms around the millions of memories, around the ocean of love she so generously shared and I will stuff it all into my own heart’s bowl and carry it with me, a gift I will cherish forever.
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Photographs of Auralie’s bowls taken this summer on Sister Point, our forever wild piece of land in coastal Maine, by Auralie and Helen’s beloved niece, Emily Haskell.
