Stuff That Makes Them Smile

"Every day we're standing
In a time capsule
Racing down a river from the past
Every day we're standing
In a wind tunnel
Facing down the future coming fast..."

–Rush, Turn the Page

He said he didn’t want any of his old kid stuff. The awards, the papers, the artwork – any of it. But when his mom said she’d have to throw it away because her and her new husband were downsizing and moving to a new place, and he had to move out, he had a change of heart.

My airport shuttle driver told me this story about his older step-son, who had been living with them for the past few years. It’s not a surprise that more men and women in their 20’s and even 30’s have moved back to live at home with their parents because they just can’t afford living on their own. Especially in the Bay Area where housing costs are insane.

But it wasn’t the fact that our two daughters may have to live with us someday as adults that got me thinking about stuff. They’re years away from high school still and light years away from college, if that’s their path.

No, it got me thinking about other stuff. Their school (and even home created) stuff. All their papers and writings and awards and artwork – all of it. Like many parents, we’ve been collecting their stuff since before preschool. My wife is the sorter and tosser and keeper of the kids' stuff and has done an amazing job of it to date. But damn, it’s a daunting task, and now she’s starting to lean on me more for rhetorical “what to do” advice.

“What are we going to do with all this stuff?” my wife said to me recently. With this school year nearly complete and the end-of-year open house past us, we again brought home a bunch of papers, journals, artwork and more, and it’s again time to sort, toss and keep.

Of course, my wife will still manage the bulk of it; she's amazing at that stuff, and I am not. When it’s your child’s stuff and you’re super proud of anything that they do, it’s tough to decide. What helps with our tough decisions is the fact that space is finite at our house and our garage is already full of all our stuff and hasn't sheltered our car in over a decade.

And then there’s the hanging of their art all over the house, which we display proudly. Both girls are very creative and insightful and we feel like they are amazing artists (of course we do, right?). Year after year we swap out the old art for the new and keep what we think are the best ones to eventually pass back to our daughters when they're on their own someday (once they're not living with us anymore, of course).

I have a special box in our garage. Just one special box, full of sentimental stuff that my mom saved for me over the years – stories, poetry, reports, artwork – all the stuff. Add to that the special photo albums she made for me including a very special one when she threw me a surprise birthday party for my 21st birthday with friends and family, an especially anxiety-filled time in my life (God knows I've had my share of those). After I had gone away to college and lived on my own, she asked if I wanted to take them all, and I did. Even with the good and the bad of my past, I would never deny my heart and soul my box of special stuff.

It's like a time capsule I can dig up anytime I want and look through. The fossilized remnants that still anchor me to my childhood and my teenage years, remnants that make me smile and make me sad. We'll want our girls to have their own special boxes someday as well, we hope mostly full of stuff that makes them smile more than we did growing up. And if we have anything to do with it, which we have and we do, they will.

This Creativelocity

She kept adding things to it. Gummy bears and other little colorful creatures having some kind of elaborate yet fun party around, inside and atop a glass mug full of ice cream, cookies and other sweets in general.

Then there was the back page of her artistic creation, with a pair of eyes peering out from some darkness asking:

Hello, is this the party?

And then one of the other gummy creatures responding:

The party is over here, Jeff.

I’m sorry, what?

This was our oldest daughter’s entry in the Downtown Santa Cruz Association ice cream month coloring contest. Both our girls entered. We assumed there’d be dozens of kids that would submit their entries as well.

The winner would win ice cream every week for one year from these local ice cream and cookie shops: The Penny Ice Creamery, Mission Hill Creamery, Pacific Cookie Company, Marini’s Candies and Coldstone Creamery. The girls were so excited about coloring their respective pages and turning them in – and dreaming of all the super yummy ice cream.

Beatrice’s idea was a to color in an fantastical world of gummy bears having a fun party. She felt pretty good about her final submission, as did Bryce. We told both girls that they each had a shot, but in the end, only one person would win. Maybe it would be one of them, or maybe not.

Two weeks later after they submitted on the deadline, the Mama (what I lovingly call my wife) received an email stating that out of over 50 different submissions, Beatrice had won the contest.

A whole bunch of tasty ice cream every week for a year. Wow.

Bryce was bummed at first, until we reminded her that we’d all be benefiting from the sweet win. Beatrice beamed when the Mama told her; we were all so proud! She told the Mama she purposely added a lot of creative detail to her picture to make it a story, and that she visualized winning, something she hears from us all the time. In fact, at the bottom of the coloring sheet where it listed the URL DownTownSantaCruz.com, she crossed out the .com and wrote “Thank you” above it and below it “for making this happen.”

Accessing the creative energy of the universe, the inspired spiritual economy of reciprocity. Put it out there, and get it back. Right on, Bea.

She may be struggling in math, but we definitely encourage her and her sister to stoke their creative fires. They’re both always drawing and coloring and building and crafting and experimenting, and for Bea now, writing stories and comic books. We burn through reams of paper. We recycle a lot of paper and keep it for them to use, and yet, when they burn through that, they’re digging into our home printer and creating more stuff with the good paper.

So that’s why the Mama keeps them stocked up with the paper and pencils and pens and marking pens and paints and glue and a myriad of other stuff that keeps them designing at the speed of imagination, a creative velocity of colliding atoms that generates an innovative gravity too many of us lose in adulthood. And like physics, its messy yet intentional and smooshed together, this creativelocity, this coloring of inside and outside the lines and even the spaces in between – to find patterns and insights and stories where none were before. Maybe someday they’ll help solve the world’s problems, or at the very least, keep their souls nurtured and their sanity in check.

Either way the gummy bear party is over here, baby, where the sweets couldn’t be any more divine.