I was browsing amazon.com for books on writing, which led me to books on writing about motherhood, which led me to a book called The Creative Family. The picture intrigued me. It made me feel homey. It made me yearn for home and family and children. And creativity.
So I used the Amazon's Look Inside feature to read a few pages. Chapter one was a very simple concept. "Teach your children to be creative by being creative yourself." Hmm, I already know that. But oh, it felt so good to hear it. I'm not sure what it was that made her words so much more powerful, but I felt a yearning waken in me.
Oh, I am creative. I love to draw and write and scrapbook. But somewhere along the line it stopped being an exploratory pursuit and turned into something else to do. It stopped being play and started being a job. Something more to get done. Something more to accomplish. Another short story. Another article. Another home school assignment.
I wanted to be a kid again and just enjoy art for the sake of art. Not to improve myself or make some money or be a better mother or make my house more beautiful. But instead, just to have fun.
With this thought in mind, I decided to be more playful during bedtime routine last night. Little R brought me some "soup." She had a bowl, a toy cat, and spatula. "I'm mixing," she said proudly to me.
"Are you making cat soup?" I said, making a yucky face.
"Eat some, Mommy!"
"Oh no, yucky, yucky, yucky!" I shake my head and make faces. She laughs.
She insists. I must try the cat soup.
I pretend to take a tiny, tiny sip. And then proceed to make the most horrible faces. She laughs again. But now the laughter is deeper, as though it came from the belly.
For the next five minutes, I proceed to exaggerate the most extradorinary expressions of disgust. And let me tell you, it felt so good to be kid for just five minutes. It was freeing. When it was done, I tucked the girls into bed, which they jumped into bed more readily than usual. They hugged me more tightly. And there was a deeply satisfied spark of happiness and contentment in their eyes that hadn't been there in a long time.
I imagine my eyes looked about the same.
Something profoundly spiritual had occurred in that playful moment. As though I had found myself once again. As though the years of stress and the heavy burdens of adulthood had fallen away.
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