Five Years a Writer

German pottery:  blue-grey, salt-glazed, heavy, and lovely; formerly Mum ’ s, now Jane ’ s   By the end, all that was left was one inherently unattractive flowerpot. I didn’t want it, and clearly nobody else did either. But that one pot represented an almost complete victory for me this past weekend — our city’s semi-annual curb-side give-away weekend. What had started out as a motley collection of miscellaneous household and gardening items with a few kitchen utensils thrown into the pile had been reduced to that one pot. I will next place in the back lane — our year-round ‘please take it off our hands’ give-away spot  —  hoping to never see it again. I’ve come a long way since my early childhood when my mother’s penchant for finding treasures at the curb filled me with shame. One time, Mum had been driving me somewhere in the little German village where we were living (my father’s work had taken us there) and 9-year-old me expected to get to that destination without incident, but Mum