About Alma
I could see her before I made her.
I had never made a bead in my life, and then one day this whole lamp appeared to me, clear as anything. I didn't question it. I just started.
I made Alma in the months after I lost my baby. Every bead, hand formed and threaded onto the pole, hundreds of them, one at a time. I didn't set out to make a lamp. I needed my hands to be doing something while my heart figured out what to do with everything else. Slowly, bead by bead, she came together.
There's something about making the same small thing over and over with your hands. It empties you out, in a good way. With each bead, I left a little of the heaviness behind. What was left was love. That's what Alma is made of.
I believe what leaves us in body stays with us another way. Alma comes from the earth, and she'll return to it one day too.
She's not a lamp about what I lost. She's about what's still here.