All Kinds of Creative Solace

Beatrice entered her school's talent show to share her artwork. It's wasn't a judged talent show, and yet that doesn't matter. Out of the few hundred kids in her middle school, less than a dozen individuals (plus their school choir) participated in the virtual talent show. Bea submitted a short video with her showing some of her favorite art pieces from the past year. There were also other singers and musicians and voice actors and artists and film editors and more who entered. Bryce entered her school's talent show and shared her artwork as well. 

When I was 12 and my sister 10, we helped our mom break into the house of our first step-father, who was mentally ill and abusive, while he was at work. We had already gotten out of the house, but there were still too many personal things we didn't want to leave behind. In less than a day, he had changed the locks on the house, so the only way we could get in was to break in. We broke the bathroom window on the side of the house and then laid a towel over the bottom edge of the windowsill. The only person who could fit through the window was my sister. We were all scared out of our minds, with visions of him waiting quietly inside with a gun. The same gun he pointed at my mom multiple times. We got our things and got out, with no sign of him anywhere. 

Quite a juxtaposition from then to now. We're grateful that we've been safe and well and have been able to provide a stable and loving family environment for our girls. And while I did grow up in a less than stable environment, I wasn't without my creative side that my mom encouraged. I was always an avid reader (so was Amy growing up -- and we still are). We've instilled these positive habits in the girls as well; Bryce is more the avid reader overall and Bea loves her graphic novels. I also drew a lot when I was the girls' age, and was writing short stories then, too. Bea is also interested in writing her own stories in the form of graphic novels. Both girls are drawing and painting and experimenting will all kinds of art, and we continue to support them both. 

Even though the girls are back to in-person school again (5 days a week for Bryce and 2 days a week for Beatrice), we've all been fortunate to continue to be active and to nurture our creative sides over the past year of pandemic. We also know that there has been an exponential increase in stress, fatigue and depression throughout the pandemic, with many families socially isolated from family and friends. There have been too many people out of work, struggling financially to keep their families sheltered and food on the table. Domestic violence has been on the rise globally during the past year. There are families who have struggled with illness and mental health problems. And there are those who have split up for many of the reasons above.

Even when we're beyond this pandemic, the psychological and emotional impacts will be felt for years to come. Creating safe and healthy environments for our children is certainly the best intention for most parents, even when there are factors beyond our control. Leaning in on faith, on counseling, on mental health services, on the support of other family and friends are critical. Getting out of dangerous situations when there is no other alternative for safety is also critical. Through it all, encouraging our children to have a growth mindset, even in the face of extreme circumstances, can lead to all kinds of creative solace. 

Our Learning Quests

Like so many other families this year, my wife Amy and I worked from home, our daughters Beatrice and Bryce schooled from home, and our entire family lived everything from home for nearly 10 months of 2020. And as COVID-19 raged around us, and polarized people raged at each other, we did things that we loved. 

We not only became closer as a family, of which we're grateful, we expanded our personal interests and developed new habits that fueled our learning and creativity. 

For Amy, it's putting puzzles together. The love of puzzles isn't new to her, and she rekindled it pre-pandemic. But once shelter-in-place orders started, she began to buy puzzles at Goodwill. At the end of each day of working and schooling from home, she pulls out the latest puzzle she'd started, spread out over a big piece of cardboard, and get to identifying the myriad of interlocking pieces. When she's nearly done with a puzzle, she lets the girls place the last few pieces. Then she puts them all back in the box and gives them back to Goodwill for someone else to buy. 

For the girls, it's doing art, specifically drawing with colored pens and pencils. This isn't new to them either, but there's been of surge of creativity between the two of them. Each girls has a unique artistic eye within their developing talents. Bryce loves Japanese anime and a games called Gacha Life, Adopt Me and Among Us, which influences much of her art of late. Beatrice likes the same games, but not anime as much, and is also big graphic novel fan. Both girls like reading graphic novels actually, with Bryce enjoying text chapter books more than Bea. Both girls also draw what they like from looking at other images and from memory, and their interpretations are quite memorable. Like Bea's Rudolph from the stop-motion animated show from 1964 and her recent sunset interpretation. She's now working on a creepy graphic novel, a genre and style she loves.

As for me, well, it's been about the drums this year. I've been an air drummer since I was first introduced to rock and roll by mother, but I never took lessons, never owned a drum set, and never played in junior high or high school. In the early 1990's, before I met Amy, I remember going to a music store with my ex and buying a practice pad with a stand and some drumming lesson books. That lasted about a week and then they were shoved into a closet never to be seen from again. Before Bea was born, I started up again with another practice pad, a pair of drumsticks and foot pedals for footwork practice. I had some new printed lessons and a subscription to Modern Drummer magazine as well. That lasted a few months. Then about five years ago Amy bought me an electronic kit, and I taught myself drumming rudiments and took some online lessons, more than I had ever done before. But then the kit got moved around due to house changes and my busy work and travel schedule killed any momentum I had finally established.

2020 started off with the death of my favorite drummer, lyricist and writer, Neil Peart. Shortly after that, I carved out a new location in the garage, set up my drums again, and restarted the video lessons. Now the fire is more real than ever, and I practice nearly every night. Santa even stopped by early this year and left me an upgraded electronic kit, so I can't stop now. I won't stop now. 

The puzzle that Amy completed last Christmas, before the global pandemic changed our worlds forever, was called "The Quest For Knowledge." It's now framed and hangs in our house. How prescient and appropriate for our family this year, and how grateful we are to be able to do the things we love to do. The things that keep our synapses firing and brains rewiring -- the puzzles, the art and the drumming that drive all our learning quests. 

Other "Days of Coronavirus" posts:

The Primary Pooper Scoopers

The Little Wooden Reindeer

A Well-Being Worth Practicing

A Grateful Tree

It's This Moment That Matters

The Bank of Mom and Dad

Something to Celebrate

The Haunted Garden

Mapping the Way

Mask Up First For Your Families

All Because of One Day on the Beach

Awash in Love and Hope

The Building Blocks of Healthy Lives

The Part Where All Lives Matter

The Clarity Bridge for Homelessness

Stars to Shine

Loving Community Wide Shots Abound

A Foundation Worth Saving

This Hit-And-Run Thunderstorm

Help Prevent the Back-to-School Bullying

Memories Now and to Come

Especially Our Kids

This Old "No" Guy Jedi

Choose Eyes of Love

The Morning Work

We Shared Blue Genes

Agree to Disintegration

The Teacher Parade

All These Things Can Lead To Grace

Our Freedom Is Always Welcome

A Well of Strength

This Bad History

No Shirts, No Shoes, No Problem

The Iceberg Underneath

The Healing Hope We Can Give

Donate Your Date Nights and Help Feed Families

About All The Things

Dad, Our Family's Computer Guy

The Newest Normal

Where Our Troubles Are All The Same

This Is The Life

When There's Nowhere to Go

Jenny, Jenny, Who Can I Turn To 

The Dog That Ate The Moon

“Imagination is the golden-eyed monster that never sleeps. It must be fed; it cannot be ignored.” —Patricia A. McKillip

Back then it was The Hardy Boys and The Three Investigators. Stories of boys, teenagers actually, solving mystery after mystery, with lots of action and adventure along the way, plus encountering and then explaining strange phenomena. I read what seemed like hundreds of these books, from the day of first getting my library card around 3rd grade until early adolescence. I never actually counted the number, though. I just kept on reading and reading.

And I wrote my own mystery stories and illustrated them as well. I even sent one of the detective stories I wrote in 6th grade to a publisher and never hear a word either way. In retrospect, they were cathartic creative explorations that allowed me to escape a sometimes harsh environment of domestic violence and sexual abuse. My imagination gave me an outlet to create fantastical worlds with words and images, sometimes just designing inventions I longed to make real, made up or based on something that inspired me, yet never fully realizing them in real life. Like the time I desperately tried to figure out had to turn my little red wagon into Herbie the Love Bug.

Then there was my long-running obsession with fantasy, like J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and Stephen R. Donaldson's The Chronicles of Thomas Convenant, two of my favorite series. In fact, in junior high I actually learned to write in Dwarvish runes. Really, I did. And I had a whole bunch of amazing nerdy friends that did, too. And Elvish and more. Also, for a short while early in college I played Dungeons and Dragons and my character was a bad-ass Dwarf who wielded a deadly battle-ax.

That's why imagination cannot be ignored as Patricia McKillip wrote above, regardless of circumstance. To me it was and is a wide-eyed monster that never sleeps and must be fed constantly. Whether growing up with violence, or a much more stable and loving environment, one that the Mama (what I lovingly call my wife) and I have been able to provide for our girls, our imaginations have boded well for us for thousands of years of evolution and survival. It's helped us to innovate and problem solve and advance our fragile but resilient species as well as given us a powerful storytelling ability and varying filters and perceptions and differing ways to see and explain the world around us. We imagined gods and devils and reasons for living a good and just life.

Beatrice and Bryce have been imagining and articulating various worlds, creatures, science, inventions and stories since the very moment they could speak. Us encouraging imaginative play and reading, along with their teachers and others, have also helped to feed their creative beasts.

We just had a full moon and that evening the Mama said, "Since we have to spring forward with the time change, why don't we go down to the water before bedtime to see it. Otherwise it'll be lighter later and we won't be able to go."

At first I said, "Ugh. Really?" But I knew these were the moments to never let slip by, so I changed my tune.

"Okay, let's do it. It'll be fun."

The girls were excited, something adventurous to do before bedtime, so off we went. It had finally warmed a bit to our usual early spring nice weather, and the night was lovely. As we walked along the water with the girls running ahead of us, they began to imagine stories about the moon and the stars.

Bea came up with her own folk story, one about a dog named J.J. who stole a rocket ship from an unnamed man. J.J. flew to the moon in the rocket ship, not because he wanted to be an astronaut, but because he thought the moon was a waffle, and he was hungry and wanted to eat the waffle. (Both girls love pancakes and waffles.)

However, he soon found out that the moon wasn't a waffle at all -- it was just a big yucky rock glowing in the night sky -- so J.J. spit out the pieces, creating a meteor shower that lit up the night sky.

And this is why we have meteor showers. Right on, Bea.

That's when it struck me -- the fact that, this folk tale that Bea created from her own limited but pretty positive experiences to date and her own imaginative interpretation, was a metaphor for the beauty of life around us. Prevalent for some, fleeting for others.

And the fact that sometimes we all have to eat big yucky rocks to see the light.