"Here is your ice cream cone," he declares. Satisfied and soapy, he hands me a cup full of bubbles. He eyes me intently, underneath wet curls. "What flavor is it?" I know to ask. The joy sparks: she sees it, too! "It is chocolate-ish strawberry vanilla. It is served in a cone and a dish." "You are KIDDING," I gape. "That is my favorite flavor in the world." I slurp and snarf, devour the whole airy nothing in front of his damp beaming face, which dazzles into delight. "Ah-ha!" he shrieks, splashing. "Yes! We will make some more." He is three years old. He knows what adults have forgotten. Make-believe and truth are both sides of imagination's coin. Creation is our work of everyday. Here we are at bathtime. The Spirit still hovers over the water. Faucets are waterfalls, bubbles are beards, cups splash with soup, anything becomes a boat. Too often adults are mere spectators, flimsy facsimiles of what it means to witness. Distracted by phones, anxious … [Read more...] about childhood & creation: this sacred everyday
creativity
when did we decide that we were bad at art?
Here are watercolors, she said. Paint. Here are pastels, she said. Draw. Here is clay, she said. Create. A gathering of mothers. A time and space set apart. A whole afternoon to ourselves, to pause and pray and ponder what it means to approach pregnancy and childbirth as something spiritual. At Peg's retreat, I thought about birth and babies and becoming a mother all over again. But weaving between these weighty meditations were simpler sensations: the chalky smear of pastels on my fingers, the ghost-white trace of clay under my nails, the wavy curl of paper as watercolors dried. When was the last time I let myself make art for an entire afternoon? Sometimes I sit down with the kids at their small table in front of the sunny window and I doodle while they draw. Or I dip a brush and make soft strokes while they paint. Or I roll playdough into long coils while they squish and smash their creations. But I never make art. Not on my own. Why? Because I'm too busy. Because it's … [Read more...] about when did we decide that we were bad at art?
when a calling comes full circle
Mama, do the Our Father in French tonight. He whispers his request as he burrows under the comforter, eyes flashing bright in the dim of his bedroom draped in night. Of course, I agree. And in an instant we're off. I close my eyes and start to sing, and for a moment I drift back. The cold stone church, frigid even in summer. The rows of plain wooden chairs with ancient woven seats. The prayers of the Mass turned to poetry in another tongue, the words I committed to heart to keep from flipping through my missal every moment like the obvious outsider that I was, even after a year. I've forgotten so many words from that time - the names of strange vegetables at the market, the polite way to ask for directions, the slang on the corner store magazines. But still the language lingers, if not on my lips then deeper. Even when I thought I'd left it behind. . . . Some choices seem definitive. I dropped the journalism minor when I fell hard for the humanities. I left the English major behind … [Read more...] about when a calling comes full circle
rhythm, metaphor, and mama’s heartbeat
In the days leading up to the writing workshop, as I planned and packed (and wasted time worrying about how I would be away from the nursing baby for a week), I envisioned the chance to spend a week writing as a world apart from parenting. No requests for snacks, no cries for milk, no laundry to fold, no meals to prepare. For a few precious days I would get to be a Writer, not a mother-who-occasionally-writes. How wrong I was. Because not only was my writing shot through with my children and my identity as a mother, and not only did others around the table bring poignant and painful reflections on their own roles as parents, but the very craft of writing we worked to hone returned us time and time again to the early years of the parent-child relationship. In the book we used for the course, Words That Sing: Composing Lyrical Prose, our teacher Mary explained how our basic sense of rhythm, the cadence that carries our sentences, was set by our mother's heartbeat: the steady … [Read more...] about rhythm, metaphor, and mama’s heartbeat
