March 2023: Delft Blue - Laura Morris
Fingers stroking my fine features. Eyes staring at my sublime countenance.
The woman with the smiling sapphire eyes had visited the pottery shop in Heeg, Friesland earlier. She had caught sight of me and it was love at first sight. ‘How much for that one with the delicate stance?’ she had enquired.
Sye, the potter, gently stroked my back and gave me the look that he gave all his creations. ‘Ten daalder.’
‘A beautiful miniature delfts blauw,’ she replied in her thick voice, nodding as she smiled lovingly into my eyes and, with the exchange of a crisp note, we belonged to each other.
Oh, she was clumsy. Within the week she had broken my tail. It used to be a beautiful, curling tail wrapped around the air in a slithering embrace but it did not matter. I loved her despite her clumsiness and she loved my now damaged form.
The woman’s creamy sad eyes now stare at her daughter who had left for Australia years ago and had returned for a visit. With tender care, the old woman pressed me into her daughter’s warm hands. A going-away present. A vestige of her Dutch ancestry for her to remember her mother.
With her mother long gone, the daughter rolls me gently around in her palm and then places me on a shelf. Her own daughter, the old woman’s granddaughter, just like her, moves away. The granddaughter visits often, with her children in tow. I curiously watch them, wondering when they will discover me. One child picks me up and ingloriously bounces me along the shelf. ‘Be careful,’ the grandmother warns. ‘My mother gave me that back when I visited Friesland.’
Years go by. When the children visit, they now stare down at their electronic devices.
‘Would you like to play with the cat? Delfts blauw, that’s what it is. Your great-grandmother bought him ...’
Her voice dies down.
Days are forgotten. Birthdays pass without a phone call. Her memory dims. She carelessly throws a jar of coins on to the now dusty shelf and it slowly rolls towards me. My poor blue whiskers threaten to jump out of my skin with fright as the glass monster knocks me off my perch. Falling, falling to the floor. Luckily, the old woman had invested in a plush carpet which softens my fall.
She does not even notice my demise. I lay on my side with my legs ingloriously splayed.
There is a knock on the door and a soft voice floats through the house. ‘Nana. It’s me. Sarah. Here to see you.’ A young elegant woman emerges in the room where her grandmother sits in a wide, old armchair. ‘Oh. What is this that I see?’
All I can see are her cobalt blue eyes. Eyes mirroring the delicate paint job on my skin. Smiling eyes reminding me of many years earlier, when a pair of soft hands gingerly picked me up from a shelf in an old potter’s store in Friesland.
Laura Morris
Right Left Write’s March genre prompt was Historical.
As part of the Investing in Queensland Women fund, we are running a special month of Right Left Write dedicated to Queensland women and girls. Our prompt for April is My Story, My Voice.
Submit your stories of Queensland women to be considered for publication in an anthology later this year. Entries are welcomed from all writers; stories can be fiction or non-fiction, any genre, or personal anecdotes - and up to 750 words in length.
Submissions close 30 April - submit your entry now.
Right Left Write’s March genre prompt was Historical.