I found them while cleaning out a closet.
Two ceramic planters shaped like little heads.
One pinkish. One brownish.
I had forgotten I even owned them.
They’re pretty adorable. Quirky. Very much something I would buy at a flea market and proudly display in a sunny window until I inevitably forgot to water whatever plant lived inside.
I stood there for a second trying to remember why on earth I had shoved them into the dark abyss that is our hall closet.
Then, suddenly, I remembered.
Somewhere along the way, I had started worrying about what the smallest details of my life might accidentally say about me.
Apparently, that included my herb garden.
A few years ago, during what I can only describe as peak social hypervigilance, I noticed I had unconsciously planted chives in the lighter planter and mint in the darker one.
On the surface, nothing to see here.
But once I noticed it, I could not stop noticing it.
Did it mean something?
Would someone think it meant something?
Was I accidentally making some kind of statement about race? Hair texture? Diversity? Was there something hidden in my subconscious that this arrangement revealed about me? Worse, was I somehow one of those white people trying too hard to prove I cared by making sure even my houseplants looked representative?
The whole thing sounds ridiculous now.
Because it was ridiculous.
And yet, at the time, I remember feeling genuinely uneasy.
The kind of unease that only makes sense within a very particular cultural moment—one shaped by moral certainty, social sorting, and a growing sense that ordinary people were expected to interrogate themselves constantly.
So instead of laughing at myself—or remembering that I was simply a normal person who had bought two funny little pots for my meager herb garden—I quietly put the little heads in the closet.
Where they stayed for years.
I’ve been thinking about those planters a lot lately, because I realized they captured something true about a period of life that still feels strangely difficult to explain.
For several years, I felt intensely aware of myself in ways I never had before.
Not better.
Just… watched.
In many professional spaces, we were encouraged to think more carefully about race, privilege, bias, and the ways history shapes everyday life.
Much of this felt thoughtful and important to me. History matters. Racism exists. People carry different burdens and experiences. We should care about injustice. Discomfort is not always a bad thing. Sometimes it is necessary.
And yet, awareness slowly became an exhausting interrogation of myself and others.
Not because I believed there was something secretly awful hidden deep inside me.
But because I found myself increasingly preoccupied with what how I was being perceived.
My words.
My reactions.
My relationships.
Sometimes, even whether ordinary parts of my life might accidentally reveal something shameful—or unaware—that I had never intended.
And strangely, instead of feeling more connected to other people, I mostly felt afraid of what they might conclude about me.
I remember feeling nervous before my wedding in ways that now seem difficult to explain. Most of the guest list was white, and suddenly that fact felt charged. And I worried whether someone in my moderately conservative blue-collar family might accidentally offend one of my more left-leaning friends. I found myself mentally scanning for possible collisions before they happened, like some internal threat detector had permanently switched on.
And the strange thing about hypervigilance is that it does not actually make you more compassionate. At least, it didn’t for me.
It made ordinary interactions feel loaded with invisible meaning. Like everyone was silently scanning one another for evidence of moral failure.
Things I once moved through without thinking suddenly felt different.
A wedding guest list.
A whimsical weekend flea market purchase.
And maybe that is partly why, standing there in my closet, holding those ridiculous little ceramic heads, I didn’t feel angry.
Mostly, I felt sad.
Sad for the version of myself who hid them away.
Sad for how exhausting it had become to constantly interpret—and be interpreted.
Sad for how quickly we stopped allowing one another to be complicated.
So, I finally put the little heads back out.
Not because I suddenly have everything figured out.
But because not everything has to mean more than it is.
Sometimes, a painted pot is just a painted pot.
“Women With Open Minds”^
This reminds me a bit of the work of twin sisters Mary Doely Deneen and Martha Doely Winter called “Women With an Open Mind.” I wonder if it is an early version of it? They are based in St. Paul and Maiden Rock, WI https://www.facebook.com/groups/deneenpotterycollectors/posts/3328736247396507/