Maul, mace? Yes, “maul” can be a noun. This sculpture by Tom Luczycki is part medieval tool, part Flintstones’ household object (though post-Flintstones would be more accurate since it’s made of metal). It’s probably fashioned from scrap metal, the prongs welded to the bottom. It’s like something you’d see in a cartoon or a movie featuring Visigoths, a Hollywood version of Visigoths, that is.

But it’s waaaaaay too heavy to be a prop. At the same time, I don’t think it’s meant to split wood, as the definition of a maul claims, but to split open someone’s head. Or, pretend to. Or, to suggest, I could split your head open if I wanted to. My husband reminds me, Luczycki gave the sculpture to my husband because of my husband’s late hours at the office, adding he thought, “the prongs would do a real number on someone’s side, embedded between the ribs.” He gave a demonstration, holding the handle and swinging it slowly toward my husband’s ribs.

It’s always helpful to have instructions like this come with your sculpture, don’t you think?

It’s a boyhood toy, hollow, but with adult features that really could do some serious damage, unlike a plastic toy. Circular bumps help with the grip at the top but would not be pleasant if you were to rub those up and down someone’s flesh, for instance. “Thud” is what I imagine it would sound like to actually crash its sledge tips into something, castle wall, say. It says, “I will protect you.” Also, “You might want to get a tetanus shot.” It also says, “maul” is a noun and a verb, and it’s ready to serve up both forms of the word.

I feel like I need a moat to go with it.

I like a placement where the maul is steadying itself against a bookcase. An eye-catching “display” doesn’t seem right for this sculpture and its suburban setting. Its lovely brownish patina blends in with the bookcase’s wood, its “feet” resting on the soft carpet. When not in use, I think it needs to be something stumbled upon, casually threatening. And above the bookcase is a painting by Luczycki’s wife—I’m glad we found a spot to have both artists’ works near each other.

Luczycki was a graduate student in art at Tulsa University where my husband was teaching art history. He was getting his second masters. Luczycki and his wife, another graduate student in art, were witnesses at our wedding and took photos. And didn’t have any problem going to Sonic after the ceremony. Besides being the Head of Exhibits at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History, Luczycki’s blogs discuss his love of spear and boomerang throwing. Makes sense.

I made the announcement at eleven.  I told my mother, “I’m not playing with dolls any more.”

I didn’t expect her measured response, “Yes, that’s probably a good idea.”

I don’t know why that startled me.  Did I expect my mom to actually be sentimental about my dolls, their motor homes, shoes, dresses, furniture, and dramas scattered all over the living room floor?

But I think I did hear a little twinge when she added, “You are getting bigger.”  I’d outgrown dolls, and it signaled a change for both of us.

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Frida came as a big surprise.  My husband gave her to me for my birthday one year.  She is made by the painter Marsha Moore Hughes, another colleague of my husband who taught painting at Tulsa University.  When my husband and I went to the opening of a faculty exhibit, my husband pointed to the Frida piece, telling me she was mine!  I couldn’t wait for the exhibit to come down so I could take her home.  She is not to be played with but stands on the top shelf of a bookcase in our living room where she surveys all from her perch.

She reminds me a bit of Hughes in her facial features.  As a female painter, the connection Hughes might feel with the Mexican painter is obvious.  And maybe subconscious since the details of Frida’s face are there, her unibrow and moustache.  The blushing cheeks and round face remind me of Hughes, though.  And those are the eyes I remember welcoming us to art department parties Hughes would host at her home.

I didn’t need to make up a life and loves for her.  I’d read her biography, seen a documentary about her.  Appropriately, female decorative arts merge in her making as she is sewn together, hand-painted, and stuffed.  She wears her traditional dress that looks like it was fun to paint using bright colors, patterns, and splashes of paint.  The skulls on her Día de los Muertos necklace look positively chipper.

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I have Fibromyalgia, and today was painful.  I wanted to cry at the grocery store.  Frida may have had Fibromyalgia, too.  Certainly, she had pain from her accident and the procedures to repair the damage.  Pain that amplified upon itself.  The other day, I read that more nerve endings have been found in the hands of women with Fibromyalgia.  Like weeds growing.  The amplification isn’t in our heads.

But this Frida can fly when she needs to.  No pain.

When my husband gave her to me, I didn’t have Fibromyalgia, I didn’t live in a border town where Frida would cross by train, I didn’t know I may have some Taíno ancestry, which has links to ancient South American indigenous people.  I didn’t live in a culture where it’s considered very strange not to have children.  I think I am growing into having my Frida doll.

Excuse me–it’s time for a tea party.