I must have been in the 1st grade when I made my dad an ashtray for Father’s Day. Or rather, I was in the 1st grade when the Father’s Day art project was making an ashtray. My father smoked then. So did most dads. I remember forming the clay and making little divots to hold the cigarettes. My father actually used that ashtray for years along with the yarn covered soup can turned pencil holder.
Fast forward nearly 30 years. Cigarettes have long been out of fashion. My father finally quit smoking about 10 years ago. The ashtray I made him in the 1st grade is long gone.
Or is it?
On Sunday, my 2nd grader handed me a brown paper bag tied with string. Inside it held a “candy bowl” fashioned out of clay and glazed green. I wondered if the green color was to remind me of how he told me I could be the Hulk since “I get angry so easy.” Really, when I looked at that green piece of clay, all I could think of was how teachers now call the ashtray project the candy bowl project.
Same form. Different purpose.
Candy bowl?
Ashtray?
A generation gap?
You decide.
Confess. What has been your most unusual Mother’s Day gift?
