The ugliest bowl

Four weeks and many funny shaped bowls later, I'm wrapping up the pottery course I joined with my sister. She is a pottery fanatic who's been messing with the art form for years. I'm a total beginner who thought it would be fun to try something different. It was cool exploring another medium to express myself and I really enjoyed the peaceful meditative feeling of sitting at a pottery wheel.

My sis and I are both quite different in our tastes. She likes symmetry and would spend endless amounts of time creating straight lines and even sides. I'm not as finicky and so I'll pull off my lopsided bowls and cylinders from the pottery wheel and declare them as art. Despite our differences, we both agreed that the ugliest of the bowls was something I created that we didn't think could be used for anything practical. I glazed it anyways, all along thinking it would sit in a storage box. What a surprise when I got a call from Zaman this morning telling me how much he loved the purple bowl and that he was eating his breakfast out of it. Seems he thought the 'ugly' bowl was the prettiest of them all and was so happy when we told him we made it especially for him (yes, a little white lie, but you would understand if you saw the smile on his face).

I don't know what my nephew saw in this oddly shaped bowl that's not really the right size for anything. However, I notice that he has the remarkable ability to see brilliance in most things my brainwashed adult eyes overlook. He marvels at the color in a dry fallen leaf and I can only see dull brown. He picks up rocks that he claims are beautiful and smooth after I've passed them without a glance. He looks with awe and excitement at the simple fort I made out of a blanket and chairs while I stress about how I can improve its structure. What a wonderful gift, to see worth in everything through open minded eyes. I hope he keeps that view forever.