I had to take a break from stained glass when I was expecting my son. There were quite a few reasons to take a break, so I did. When my son was born and the haze of the first couple of months has passed, I began thinking of making a stained glass panel for his room. With a newborn and a toddler my hands were full, so when I finally got to actually making it, I had no choice but to make it small. So, I made a 1 square foot panel with a green crescent moon and a red rocket - bright, cartoonish and fun.
When we moved to a new house three years later, I had to cover up a transom window in my son's new bedroom. I decided to use the square panel with the rocket and designed a transom around it. When it was built and installed, I thought it turned out well and my guests have commented on it quite a few times.
However, I could never tell if my son really liked it or not. It has been around as long as he could remember, so he really could not answer me with anything better than a quick and thoughtless "sure, mommy". And, of course, he was not even four years old, so it was silly to expect a serious answer to this question…
The answer came suddenly more than a year later. Last week he came up to me and complained that while his sister picked a night light for her room from my inventory, he could not pick one because there were no "boy ones". I immediately offered to make a night light for him and asked what he would like: a car, a plane, a basketball? "No, mommy", he answered, "I want a rocket night light, a red one, just like the rocket in my window!"