Growing up, I discovered my mother knew a great deal about antiques and craft work. When we went to live briefly in New Mexico in the early 1960s in Albuquerque (while my father went to grad school at UNM), I’d accompany my mother to Old Town. There, she developed a passion for what she claimed were Zuni owls, and bought two ceramic ones, each about seven or eight inches high. They were brightly painted: one in a pastel yellow and the other in a sky blue. Their faces had wide eyes and cleverly rendered beaks, and curved brush marks denoted feathers on their swelling chests.

Years later, after futilely searching the Southwest for brightly painted ceramic owls, I now realize that her acquisitions were actually Mexican tourist wares. But I bought this fine fellow in the pueblo a few years ago to remind me what a Zuni owl really looks like.