Charlotte the Tiger Cat: Transitional Object in Residence
By Adam Engleson, Hannah’s Dad
In early October, Museum of Glass staff discovered an orange plush cat left among the seats of the Hot Shop Amphitheater. We could tell that this cat was clearly adored, so we took to our social media pages to try to find this stuffy’s person. Our MOG community rose up around us in droves and helped to share the posts far and wide. We were overjoyed to eventually be able to reunite the cat, whose name is Charlotte, with her person, Hannah! Through our conversations with Charlotte’s and Hannah’s family, we learned that Charlotte’s story was even more special than we could have guessed.
Charlotte wonders when she’ll see her human companion again. Photo by Museum of Glass, featuring room to grow (watermelons) by Jude Abu Zaineh in She Bends: Redefining Neon Legacy.
The prime objective when undertaking a family road-trip, every parent will agree, is to return all family members safely home and in one piece. On October 1, 2024, your humble author, father of four, utterly failed at this imperative. Indeed, No one gets left behind! has become the battle cry over the years as our blended family has worked to integrate in the face of intractable opposition, disruptive interference, and medical trauma endured by almost every member of this motley crew. In the immortal words of Big Daddy Kane, “steppin’ ain’t easy.”
Before I tell the story of my abject negligence, and consequently of the vital role the Museum of Glass played in the reunification of our family, I should take a moment to introduce the members. My name is Adam Engleson. This year, I turned fifty. When I was fourteen, it entered my head that I should be a glassblower for a living. Never having seen the art performed at that time, I’ve no idea how such a fanciful notion entered, and took up permanent residence in, the folds of my nascent gray matter. Yet four decades on and this romance with molten magic persists. My circumambulation around the flames of torch and furnace has enriched this meager craftsman’s life with lessons both material and mystical. My career in glass is not, however, what brings me to this writing, as I am not the one in this family who, without irony, is in possession of a VIP pass to the storied Museum of Glass.
My fellow traveler on this stretch of life is Christina Engleson. If I am a blob of molten goo dropped from the punty of a naive Studio Glass pioneer from the 70s, she is an immaculate cut-crystal chandelier. I am a Pyrex funfair unicorn; she is the Lycurgus Cup. If I may beat this metaphor into cullet: I am a mushroom pendant from your local head shop; she is a Blaschka flower. Accompanying us on this particular road trip were the children. Tristan is my thirteen-year-old first-born son, who rolls his eyes at my beliefs in astrology, in atypical Piscean fashion. Also with us was Christina’s son Micah, age eight, who could hold his own in conversation with Nietzsche and Schopenhauer regarding the deeper and darker questions of life. Disrupting all this familial tranquility is our firebrand of a daughter, Hannah, age six. Miss Hannah has arrived on earth to experience the full range of human emotion, to amplify these emotions until the meter clips, and then express them in every medium to which her little form has access. No crayon is safe, no marker sacred, no paint is spared. Her canvas is the world. It is the paper, the walls, the floors, the furniture, her own skin. Pablo Picasso famously quipped, “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child,” and Hannah has answered “Ok. Bet.”
Along for the ride was Charlotte, the true subject of this article. Charlotte belongs to Hannah. Charlotte is what is known in developmental psychology and object relations theory as a “transitional object” or a “comfort object.” To a young child, the process of separation-individuation is a normal but traumatic phase of development, as she realizes her separateness from the world. To aid in this transition, many children will adopt a transitional object, and, through cathexis of the child’s emotional and mental energy projected onto this object, some relief is found in those frightening periods when mommy is away, when the night is dark, when one realizes the creaks and groans of a settling house do not belong to self, that they are produced external to the self and are therefore a potential threat. In this way, the inanimate object becomes alive to the child, becomes a friend. Charlotte is such an object for Hannah. Dropping the stuffy psychobabble, Charlotte is, well, a stuffy. A stuffy tiger-cat, to be precise.
Hannah and her pal Charlotte. Photo courtesy of the Engleson Family.
In all honesty, I do not like it when Charlotte travels with us. She is quiet, to be sure, and her needs are few, but the attachment is so complete and Hannah’s dependency still so deep that the risk of losing track of her is usually more anxiety than I wish to bear on long distance trips. As usual my protestations went unheeded, and Charlotte found her way into the go-bag as we departed from coastal southern Oregon for our journey to Tacoma.
Though our trip included many stops, at the forefront of my mind was Museum of Glass. I had known about MOG since its construction was completed and had always longed to visit. So, when we stopped downtown for a coffee before beginning the long trek home, I mentioned to Christina that the Museum was “just over there,” gesturing to the waterfront. “Want to check it out?” I asked innocently, knowing that the family was exhausted, hungry, and eager to get on the road. Yet here I was, a mere half-mile from the closest thing to my Mecca as I can be without traveling to Venice. I was thrilled when she agreed that we could squeeze in a visit.
Of course, the art was amazing. I refrained from name dropping the artists like a know-it-all dad lest I drive them again to disinterest. Instead, I delighted in my own internal monologue: Ooooh, there’s Lino Tagliapietra! And there’s Preston Singletary! And there’s Petr Novotny! You know, I once knew a lady from Pilchuck who studied under a lad from RISD who worked with a guy at Corning who traveled to Czechoslovakia to work with Petr. Yeah, we’re pretty much best friends!
As the children made shadow puppets in the Education Studio and submitted their own quickly sketched ideas for the Kids Design Glass program, I took the opportunity to stroll at leisure through the gallery of children’s designs in Art Alley. I can tell you, if you ever find yourself devoid of a joy that you knew was once inside you but has somehow been lost or left behind like a ragged stuffy, walk this gallery of children’s designs manifest in glass. Spend some slow time here. The love of the creators and their collaborators is so apparent in this space, the objects so infused with cathected life, one cannot help but to catch a bit of that spark. To me, this is the real magic of art. When people say art is life, I don’t believe they speak in hyperbolic terms. It is the same power, uniquely human, that gives force to the totem, the talisman, the prayer bead, and the stuffy. It is the symbolic made real. It is, in the final analysis, the eternal transitional object. May you find some comfort here.
A word of advice for touring MOG: feed your children before visiting the Hot Shop. I’m afraid they did not experience the same sense of wonder at being within the conic cathedral as I did. Enthralling as I imagined the furnace and glory hole would be for the children, these descendants of their own minor glass legacy were fidgety and irritable as if being subjected to a Sunday sermon on the Beatitudes. Whereas I had assumed the litany of process steps being narrated from the floor would reach their ears like gospel, instead I found myself likewise not engaged and rather disappointed with their disinterested demeanor. And that is how Charlotte was left behind in the Hot Shop, forgotten and abandoned by a distracted and famished family.
Charlotte basks in the heat of the Hot Shop. Photo by Museum of Glass.
Charlotte is a very special kitty. Whatever magic Hannah had infused into the very fabric of her toy was not lost on our friends at the Museum. She was discovered where we had left her, there amongst the smell of charred newspaper and cherrywood, alone with the rumble of blazing machinery, watching through scratched plastic eyes the dimming orange glow of refractory brick cooling like a setting sun. How scared and abandoned we can imagine she must have felt when a warm and kindly hand lifted her from the cold concrete floor and recognized the life within.
What the staff could not have known is that Charlotte, like her keeper Hannah, lives with the condition of type 1 diabetes. T1D is an autoimmune disorder wherein the body develops immunity mechanisms in error that attack the beta cells of the pancreas. In normal functioning, these cells create and express the hormone insulin. Insulin is essential to the homeostatic regulation of blood glucose levels in the body. T1D patients produce no insulin and thus sugar is no longer taken up into the cells for proper metabolism. In response to this lack of an essential fuel source, in order to survive, the body will begin to metabolize fat for energy. The by-product of rapid fat metabolism is an over-abundance of ketones which build up to dangerous levels in this diabetic condition, known as diabetic ketoacidosis, or DKA.
It was in this state of DKA that we brough Hannah, on the verge of a coma, to her pediatrician, ten days away from her first birthday. The entire family had been suffering from bouts of flu at the time, but, one by one, we recovered. We expected this same recovery from our little girl, but Hannah continued to grow more and more ill until we realized that her condition could no longer be explained away as a lingering flu. I bless the doctor for wasting no time in his diagnosis, arranging a Life Flight to take us to Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Portland, and instructing the local emergency room to be ready with an IV of insulin for Hannah while we waited for the medical flight to arrive.
This was five years ago now. I cannot say that living with type 1 is easy. In the first year alone, Christina and I delivered approximately 2,000 insulin shots to Hannah via subcutaneous injection. Hannah truly embodies the warrior archetype. She exhibits an uncanny recognition of her condition and demonstrates an understanding of the vagaries of its management that is truly beyond her few years. Her courage in the face of the pokes, the prods, the highs and the lows, and her unwillingness to let these challenges stand in her way, in any way, is testament to the resilience of children who live with and overcome great obstacles. She is kind of my hero.
It was a full two weeks after our return home to Coos Bay that I realized we had not seen Charlotte in quite some time. I had a sneaking suspicion that something was amiss but remained hopeful that she would soon be discovered among the clutter of our home-under-renovation. She could be anywhere in this house as the nooks outnumber the crannies and crannies overwhelm the crevices in this small house of six souls living in relative upheaval. Charlotte is known to meander behind the clubhouse bed for days, to take refuge in the bunk bed blankets, or behind a dresser, or between the two refrigerators. Inevitably, though, Hannah’s plaintive cry for her return would rise and fill the house at the onset of night: “Where is Charlotte?” Then the search party would form, and everything would be turned over until the tiger-kitty was located and rescued. This time, however, it had been a fortnight since the cat had been seen. In hushed tones I whispered to Christina, “I haven’t seen Charlotte since we got back. Maybe she won’t ask about her?” No, she had already been asking. Well, let the heartbreak begin. I spent a few hours searching and resigned when I felt I had exhausted all possible locations. Christina and I thought about the last place we had seen Charlotte and realized it must have been on the trip, meaning Charlotte could be anywhere. We figured we had only a very long shot of recovering her. I asked Christina if she would work backwards and begin calling some of the likely places Charlotte could have been left behind. Then I spent another hour looking around the house and through the cars.
Charlotte does some self-reflection in the galleries. Photo by Museum of Glass, featuring Room to Breathe by Lily Reeves in She Bends: Redefining Neon Legacy.
I was upset. Angry, even. Perhaps irrationally so. After all, Charlotte was just a thing, a ratty stuffed cat with cataracts, matted fur, and a misshapen head from being snuggled and toted about for years in my little girl's loving arm. Yet, as a very real extension of Hannah, Charlotte had undeniably become a fixture in this household. She had earned her place as a member of this family. And no one gets left behind. The next day, I began the process of forgiving myself for the neglect. I told myself that grief is a natural process and Hannah is no stranger to it. Perhaps this would be just another valuable lesson for her, for everyone, in acceptance. But it didn’t sit right with me. Charlotte is family.
After many days of searching and phone calls, I received a text from Christina to check out the Museum’s Facebook page and see what Charlotte had been up to! My heart lifted when I saw those photos of Charlotte so lovingly posed, watching the glassblowers in the Hot Shop, admiring the neon in She Bends: Redefining Neon Legacy, trying on a pendant necklace in the Museum Store, finding a Kids Design Glass kitty friend on display in Art Alley. I felt such an inexplicable joy that this group of people I had never met would find Charlotte and, not only would they not toss her in the rubbish bin or consign her to some dusky lost-and-found box with the scarves, sunglasses, and mismatched mittens, but that they would recognize in her the cherished nature of a sacred object, and that they would choose with reverent respect to celebrate and elevate that nature to new heights… Well, this show of humanity brought me to tears. You know, the kind of tears you love to cry.
Charlotte is lured to La Finestra Café by the smell of freshly baked croissants.
Photo by Museum of Glass.
Charlotte is tempted by the wearable glass treasures found in the Museum Store.
Photo by Museum of Glass.
Charlotte was returned to her keeper carefully packed by the Museum’s curator. She was wearing necklace of glass kitty beads. She had her own comfort object hand-stitched for her in the shape of the iconic stainless-steel cone. She came bearing a greeting card for Hannah, and, in case Charlotte would ever care to return to the Museum of Glass, the security team provided her with a photo ID badge displaying her VIP status, complete with vinyl pouch and lanyard. I’ll say it again, craftspeople are my people. Thank you, Museum of Glass.
– Adam, Christina, Hannah, and, forever yours, Charlotte.
Meow.
Charlotte and Hannah, reunited at last. Photos courtesy of the Engleson Family.
A Final Note From Adam
In light of the medical challenges our daughter faces, a mediocre career in the craft of glasswork seems a trivial thing to sacrifice, and it is. In stark contrast to my approach at life, that of craftspeople are my people and I shall become privy to their ways, Christina has chosen the more pragmatic course of I like to have food in the fridge for my children to eat. I see the wisdom in this. As she navigates through the world of banking and finance, complete with medical benefits and other support structures inherent to corporate life, I have embarked on the journey of primary caregiver to young Hannah and the rest of our beautiful family. So, glass, for me, for now, has been of low priority. This hiatus has lasted half a decade. In that time my identity has been restructured, deconstructed, and reformed. It has been a painful but necessary process.
As Hannah enters her school years, she now has a team of daytime caregivers. Each day, she grows proudly toward independence, and I find myself less relevant in the caretaker roll and with more time on my hands. Again, I find a need to restructure my identity. So, with hopeful aspirations I return to glass with a new initiative. I would like to make and provide for children with diabetes a sort of comfort object. By convenient coincidence, the vials that insulin is delivered in are made of borosilicate glass, a material with which I have much experience working. These vials, I have found, can be melted and fashioned into pendants with colorful adornments of murrine and floral design. The initiative is called Vials for Smiles, and the mission is to provide beautiful glass pendants, free of charge, to children living with type 1 diabetes. I love the idea of taking an object that has been instrumental in the saving of a life and refashioning it into something entirely new and different that a child could wear in testament to their strength in the face of medical adversity. My hope is that the child could feel some connection to another who struggles with the same condition and know that they are not alone when they wear the other person’s refashioned vial close to their heart. These pendants will be distributed to pediatric endocrinology offices, children’s hospitals, and diabetes camps wherever I can connect with participating partners. My hope is to fund the initiative through donation of spent vials and financial resources, and through the sale of pendants to people who have the means to purchase and help fund the mission. The website is currently under development. I can be contacted with any inquiries regarding this project at adam@vialsforsmiles.org.