Tag: creativity

Stage directions

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Always, there are the insights of people who are part of our lives, but just outside the inner circle of our immediate home life, to bring an objective perspective to what we do. With a word, a phrase, we suddenly see our everyday actions in a different light.

Last night, my sister stopped by my house on her way home from work. I had picked up some plants that she wanted for the garden, but I did not want the responsibility of keeping them alive through the predicted weather of another night of drought or severe thunderstorms—either seemed a distinct possibility. So she agreed to pick them up.

She arrived as we were eating dinner, and since part of our meal contained none of the ingredients that trigger her allergies, I offered her some food, and she accepted. Which is a long-winded way to say she hung around for a while.

After dinner, there was some talk of who was responsible for the dishes, and it was determined that it was J’s night. She promptly left the room, stating that “the leftovers needed to be left-overed” before she could begin. She spent the next ten minutes flitting in and out of the kitchen—complete with her J-like theatrical flourish—while I talked with Auntie.

The cat came in from outside and proceeded to regurgitate the organic material he had ingested—as cats do—onto the kitchen floor. It was a lovely addition to the non-stop-ness of the evening.

J flitted back into the kitchen. “Steps wide over the cat vomit,” she announced as she lifted her foot in an exaggerated dance-step over the puddle the cat left behind.

Auntie scrutinized J’s action. “Does everything come with stage directions now? ‘J enters the kitchen. Steps wide over the cat vomit….’”

I laughed. How many times had I heard one of the kids narrate his or her actions? How many times had I done so myself? Often, I would make a similar statement as I stepped over a child sprawled on the floor; my objective was first, to let the child know that I was trying to avoid him or her, and second, to let the child know that he or she was smack in the middle of the pathway through the room.

But this statement—a simple observation—from my sister helped me to reframe these narrations. They are like stage directions, and they tell the actor or actors what to do and how to do it.

I wonder if there is some way that I can edit these narrations and add my own. “J enters the kitchen; cleans up the cat vomit….’”

I think I’ll work on that….

3D Printers

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We have been sick at our house for what seems like forever. The normal winter viruses hit hard on the first day of spring, and they haven’t stopped.

C has spent the spring struggling with bronchitis, pneumonia, bronchitis, etc. It’s a nasty cycle, and with the number of viruses that have gotten him, it just keeps cycling. The rest of us have been cycling in and out, so there are generally two of us sick at any given time. Enough already.

Meanwhile, W has spent the spring talking about 3D printers. He wants one. Badly. He also has enough money saved up to buy one. The kid doesn’t even have a job, but somehow, he has collected enough money in his bank account to pay for a 3D printer. A friend of his has the one he wants, so he knows how it prints pretty well.

Every chance he gets, he talks about 3D printers. At dinner: “If I had a 3D printer….” At breakfast: “Do you know what I could do with a 3D printer?” After school: “I could print you one… if I had a 3D printer.” While I’m cooking: “So, I was reading about 3D printers….”

After awhile, I just go with it. Whatever comes out, I fly. “So, this 3D printer I want…” he starts in for the gazillionth time.

“Did you know you could make body parts with a 3D printer?” I respond, without missing a beat. “You can print heart valves and ears. They are even using them to make affordable prosthetic limbs. You could go into business. I’ll bet you could make a lot of money!”

He looked at me, speechless for just a split second. I had stopped him in his tracks. He shook his head. “Not with the one I’m getting.” He paused to breathe, as he does when he is trying to shift the direction of the conversation.

“Really…” I jumped in before he had time to start his new direction. “If you could figure that out, it would be great. Think about all the people you could help!”

“Mom. Stop.” A bit of frustration was evident in his tone. “Those printers cost thousands of dollars. Mine won’t do that.”

“I KNOW!!” I said, an idea taking shape in my head. “You could print a new set of lungs for your brother!! Clearly, he could use them.” I pointed to the coughing, hacking, wheezing (and laughing) C across the table.

“Well…” said W, looking at me and smiling broadly. “If it means I get my 3D printer…. I can figure it out!”

Going nowhere

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We were on vacation recently, staying in a place that has all sorts of fun things to keep active kids of most ages occupied and entertained. One of these attractions is a Fun Barn in which there is a bounce house, a ping-pong table, a climbing wall, and an area in which kids (um… and adults) can have nerf-ball battles. This area is caged in with netting and has hundreds of foam balls with several air powered shooters strategically placed around a climbing structure with a slide, making it easy for groups to have rousing battles. So we did.

It was after dinner on our last night. As four teenagers and two adults, we were able to have quite a battle before some younger children showed up, and we had to turn the energy down a notch. It was getting dark by then, so we decided to leave the Fun Barn to walk back to the lodge. It was chilly for the end of April, but the days were getting longer, the snow had finally (mostly) melted, and the flowers were starting to bloom. We could hear spring peepers off in the distance.

As we exited the Fun Barn, J wanted to go to the playground. It was getting dark, and the sign posted on the playground fence claimed the area closed at dusk. But a simple sign would not deter J. “Let’s just go see,” she said, running ahead with W to check out the playground. “The chain’s not up!” she reported of the yellow plastic chain used to discourage after hours playground use.

Gleefully, the two of them slipped through the gate and ran to the merry-go-round. Not a carousel merry-go-round, but a playground merry-go-round—the kind that most schools did away with years ago as children flew off when they spun too fast and couldn’t hold on. My two each grabbed a side and started running to get the merry-go-round moving.

“When I say THREE, jump on!” called W. “One, two, THREE!” They both landed with the muffled thud of rubber soles on metal platform. They hung their heads off the edge, hair flying up in the centrifugal force. They completed this exercise several times before their activity diminished to lying on the platform while the movement slowed, looking up at the branches of the tree above.

“Mom, can I have your camera?” J asked, and I handed it over. She started taking pictures from her spot on her back looking up at the sky. She spent several minutes clicking, checking the the screen, sighing and trying again.

What she didn’t realize was that it was too dark for pictures. And she also didn’t realize that what she wanted to capture was not the branches above her and the moon in the background. She wanted to capture the moment, the feeling of a beautiful spring night, vacation, and family time spent together. She wanted to capture the spinning, the breeze, the feeling of going nowhere, and the thrill of the ride.

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Modifications

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One day this week, I went to the basement to take care of the cat boxes. I had an empty plastic bag in my hand; it was rustling and I was doing my normal “sing my way through the house” thing. It was pretty obvious that I was coming, so I am not sure why I surprised W when I entered the basement hangout. But I did.

“Oh, hey there,” he said, a tone of I’m not doing anything I shouldn’t be in his voice. He had quickly put his hands in his lap, removing them from the counter where he was working, and I sensed he was trying to hide something.

I glanced at the computer screen. It appeared that the computer was off, but since I had been singing, I decided to ask, “Are you talking to someone?” He often comes to the basement to FaceTime with his father or his cousin.

“No.”

“What’re you doing?”

“Nothing,” he replied, still watching me with an overly guilty look on his face. He did not resume whatever activity he was involved in before my arrival to the room. I studied him for a long moment, but I couldn’t figure out what he was up to, so I went about my business scooping the litter box. But then, something bright yellow caught my eye. His nerf gun sat on the counter in front of him, in the beginning stages of dissection. With all of the projects, pieces of projects, and electronic components on the counter, I almost missed it.

“Got a project going there?”

“Oh,” he said, looking down like this was the first he’d heard of it. “Yeah…. I’m trying to automate my nerf gun. And make it faster.” He grinned.

“Hmm,” I replied, my tone remaining matter-of-fact. I have learned over the years to maintain neutrality whenever possible. In the back of my mind, I always keep a thought of the Radioactive Boy Scout and the ways in which projects can get out of hand, just as a reality check. Really though, it’s a nerf gun. “Do you think you can do it?”

“Yeah.” He paused. “It does say here, ‘do not modify darts or dart blaster.’ But… you know.”

Yes, I do know. If you are a boy who likes to figure out how things work, if something can be taken apart, if there is even the possibility that it can be modified (and improved)… well, why not?

Carry on, then.

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Staples

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“What are you doing with all of the toilet paper you are stealing from the cabinets?” I asked an unsuspecting W Sunday morning when he returned from his weekend camping trip with the Scouts.

He looked at me blankly. Then a puzzled look overtook his face. “Huh?”

“The extra rolls of toilet paper you are taking from the cabinets? What are you doing with them, and where are you putting them?” I asked again.

The conversation had begun the night before, when he wasn’t here, which is why he didn’t see it coming. I had gone into the kids’ bathroom to get some medication for a coughing, sniffling kid, and I noticed there was no toilet paper in the holder. (Now, I’d love to rant about why the paper roll can be empty and no one would address the issue, but I’ll save that for another time.) When I opened the cabinet to replace the paper, there was none.

“Where is all the toilet paper?” I asked, to no one in particular. “I think I just put several rolls in here.”

“You did,” responded C. “You gave me like four rolls about a week ago.” Yep. My recollection, exactly.

“Did you put them in the little cabinet?”

“Yeah, right here,” he said, opening the cabinet. He turned and opened the cabinet under the sink, just to check that he hadn’t put them in the wrong place.

And so the conversation turned focus to W, who was always experimenting on something… and always using household goods to do so. Then it devolved to the neighbors with keys to our house, and the fact that they might be coming in for toilet paper. After all, who would notice if a roll (or two) of toilet paper disappeared here and there?

And so today, since the other two kids had blamed W, I figured I’d pull him into the mix before I settled on the neighbors.

“Is this like the spoons?” W finally asked. Ah, the spoons! I had forgotten about the spoons. With three teens in the house, we never have enough spoons. At one point, I accused the boys of ferreting them off and melting them down to make something more interesting: swords, knives, etc.

More recently, my measuring spoons went missing. But not all of my measuring spoons, just the ¼ teaspoons. All of my ¼ teaspoons, of which I once had four and have since located one. I didn’t blame anyone in particular that time. I just mentioned that someone must be coming into our house and stealing my ¼ teaspoons.

“Yes! This is just like the spoons!” I answered, too jubilantly.

“What’s the problem in there?” J hollered in from the living room.

“Just Mom being all paranoid again. Something about the toilet paper…. She thinks the neighbors are stealing our toilet paper.” We all three dissolved into giggles.

My “paranoia” is my way of using the little issues to have some fun. What the kids don’t realize is that if I didn’t express my “paranoia,” I would be pointing the finger at them and requesting that they work to curb their excessive use of essential household staples. Or maybe I am pointing at them….

 

The Frog

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When I was younger, I had a collection of knickknack frogs. One of these—made of tin and wood with limbs that dangle from joints of twine and wire—was a gift that I received many years ago, and it has a simplicity to it that is reminiscent of an earlier era. As I have moved residences over the years, I’ve pared down my collection to my favorites. This particular frog remained as it reminded me of my past for reasons I can’t exactly pinpoint.

In the townhouse where I landed with my children after my divorce, the frog took up residence on a shelf that held some books and a few ornamental items. Seldom did I notice it sitting there in its decorative, take-up-space kind of way.

One day when my children were still fairly young, I found this very frog sitting in the middle of my propane heat stove, right next to a candle that I had placed there at the end of the most recent heating season. It was late spring, and warm enough out that the windows had been open with regularity. The sight of the frog startled me because I wasn’t expecting it to be there. How odd, I thought. I wonder who put that there? It seemed like a bold placement for such an object, and I picked it up and moved it back to its normal location on the shelf.

The next morning, I woke the children, and I took a quick trip to the basement laundry room to gather some clothes. As I passed through the living room, I stopped abruptly, startled when I spotted the frog, once again sitting proudly—albeit unexpectedly—on the heat stove. The children were upstairs waking and preparing for school. I glanced around the room, not really sure what I was looking for. The room was empty. I set the laundry basket on the floor, and returned the frog to his spot on the bookshelf.

I took a deep breath, shaking off my surprise, and I went about my morning preparations.

When I was ready for the day, I went downstairs to the kitchen. I opened the door to welcome the spring air, and went to the back of the house to open the back door. Mid-way through the living room, I froze. There, on the stove, was the frog, sitting right in the middle where he’d been twice, now three times. My heart pounded in my chest as I thought through the possibilities. I glanced around the room expecting the unexpected, only daring to move my head. I pondered going to the basement to look around, but I couldn’t do it. Not alone. I went to the kitchen phone and called my neighbor.

“I think there’s someone in my house,” I reported in a near whisper. “Can you come over?”

“I’ll be right there.” She arrived a minute later, wielding a kitchen knife.

“What are you going to do with that?” I asked her.

She looked down and shrugged, smiling weakly. “It’s better than nothing!” Together, we searched the house while I explained the unexplainable to her. We found nothing, but we got a good laugh. We concluded that one of the children was playing a trick on me. No one would fess up.

It wasn’t until several months later that my oldest finally admitted to moving the frog. He read in a book how to secretly move an object. Or something. I have to say, he got me good, and we will forever joke about it.

Since that experience, the mere sight of this little frog holds an unexpected emotional charge. When I happen to see it sitting (usually in its normal place) on the shelf, I have a momentary jump in heart-rate, as if its very glance in my direction has power beyond its inanimate self. Then I laugh at the memory.

Temperature Check

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It has been a cold winter; there is no question about that. Even in the early days of March, the morning temperature still hovers around the 0° point. One day recently, I went into the kitchen at just about the crack of dawn and glanced at our indoor/outdoor thermometer. The outdoor temperature read -1°. This fact barely registered in my brain; the morning low had been nearly the same for days, maybe weeks.

I went about my early morning business packing lunches, filling water bottles, and overseeing the consumption of breakfast. My mind was not fully on the task at hand because I was pondering the day ahead. W came to the kitchen, puttered around for a minute longer than usual, and fixed himself breakfast. C stumbled down the stairs next. He stood in front of the open fridge for a moment, declared the space void of anything edible, and began packing his backpack.

Sandwiches were made, thermoses filled. I moved on to water bottles. J made her way down the stairs, popped a bagel in the toaster, and sleepily sat at the table. I pulled the pitcher of water from the fridge and began pouring it into the bottles.

“OH MY GOSH!” J exclaimed, startling us all. “Why is it so cold out?!”

Why the alarm? I wondered. Not registering that I had already checked the temperature, I looked at the windowsill. The thermometer read -17°. My mind ticked back through its stash of morning snapshots. Confusion tugged at the edges of my memory. It wasn’t that cold a few minutes ago. Was it? Had it really dropped so fast? What was going on? All of these thoughts slipped through my mind, one after the other, like a deck of cards being shuffled.

Overhearing the conversation, W came in to the kitchen from the living room. “I suppose I should change that back to Fahrenheit, huh?” he said. He picked up the thermometer and pressed the Celsius/Fahrenheit toggle button. He ducked his head to hide the mischief evident in his satisfied smirk as he made a quick retreat to the other room.

Yes, we always have to be on our toes in my house. You just never know who is up to mischief!

Periodic Table

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We were discussing the periodic table at dinner last night because … well, doesn’t everyone discuss the elements at dinner? It was just the boys and me at the table—J was off doing whatever thespians do on opening night. The conversation started with, “Let’s see how many elements we can name that start with the letter….” It might have been a fun game when I was in high school and actually remembered the elements; but I’m resourceful, so I was making them up.

I made up elements that included the names of our cats (Potonium). I made up elements after some random foods (Maltedmilkballium). And I made some with names that were just plain silly (Phantomite), but elemental, nonetheless.

The boys were getting bored with my silliness (interesting role reversal), so they decided to switch it up. “Let’s name the elements in order,” W challenged his brother. “Hydrogen.”

“Helium!” I shot in before anyone else could. I knew it was the only one I had a chance of getting right.

“Lithium,” C added to the game.

“Beryllium,” W continued, and they both seemed to wait for me to jump in. Nope. I got nothing.

“Boron,” C guessed.

“If you took regular chem, this would be a piece of cake,” I told him. He looked offended. “No,” I back-pedaled. “You would have had to memorize the periodic table. I memorized it when I took chemistry.” Of course, I only took two years of science in high school because there was ART, after all.

“Yeah Mom, but that was back when the periodic table only had five elements,” W informed me. Ow.

Yes, to my children, I am “old,” and they love to tease me about it. And someday, they will be “old” to their children, as well. It’s the circle of life. One day, when W is talking about the periodic table of elements at his dinner table, the circle of life will come full circle, and I will be the one laughing.

Sharing

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I have a new sweatshirt. It is grey and purple, fleecy and soft. And it is the perfect weight for winter we have been having. Not only was this sweatshirt on sale, I had a coupon and an extra discount for recently celebrating my birthday. All told, I believe the store paid me to take the sweatshirt off their hands.

Because it was a recent purchase, I wore it for the first time this weekend. It immediately got my daughter’s attention. “I like that shirt, Mom,” she told me, running her hand up my arm. “It’s so soft!”

“Thanks,” I replied. “It’s the same brand as the one you have, but it’s a different style.”

“I really like this one.” She paused, and I could see the wheels turning in her head. “Did you get me one, too?” she asked, smiling and batting her eyes for effect.

Of course, I thought. Because I always buy you things when I buy things… just to make it fair. But to her, I said, “Um, no. I didn’t think ‘matching your mother’ was on your fifteen-year-old bucket list.” I winked.

She shrugged her shoulders. “That’s okay. I’ll bet I can wear that one.” She turned, her hair flipping, and skipped up the stairs. And I realized that for the first time, she probably could wear this sweatshirt—my sweatshirt—and more importantly, that this is a major milestone for this kid.

Almost exactly a year ago, this child, who’s always run a little on the small side, was being tested to make sure that she wasn’t deficient in anything necessary for “normal” development. Even though she had always been off the bottom of the growth chart, the doctor just wanted to be sure. The blood tests and x-rays revealed that all is fine, but her bone age is two years lower than her chronological age.

Since that time, she has gained ten pounds and grown several inches. She eats non-stop, and she is always hungry. (I don’t know why no one ever talks about how much teenage girls can eat. If you get enough skinny dancers in your house, you may as well be feeding an army of teenage boys….)

While my daughter is still small for her age, she’s catching up. It wasn’t until she asked about my sweatshirt that I recognized my shirt is only one size larger than her own. She could easily wear it, and it would only be a little big. So for now, I’ll keep it in a safe (and hidden) place. But soon, she’ll be wearing it. I can share. And after all, I’m kind of flattered that my clothes fit her teenage sense of style.

Calculations

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One never knows what is going to happen at the dinner table in my house, nor how that information might be used in future conversations. We have discussions that range from the sublime to the absurd, and everything in between. And the conversations tend to wander from one end of that spectrum to the other—often multiple times over the course of the same meal.

On Friday night, the boys became engaged in a conversation that was both entertaining and thought provoking. Dinner was going along smoothly until one of them dropped some food on the floor and started pondering the edibility of the morsel in question.

The next thing I knew, the older brother had pulled out his napkin, and was working through a formula to determine whether or not one should remove food from the floor and eat it. His napkin was the paper on which he was composing his formula—writing out the variables involved in making the necessary “calculations.”

The younger boy watched critically as his brother developed this idea, throwing in some of the factors he believed to be important. C had based his calculations on an “average bedroom floor,” using food on a plate and (basically) food in the cats’ litter box as his extreme conditions.

“Wait! Let me show you mine!” W said, grabbing the pen from C. The wheels in his head sped up, formulating, calculating. He developed a complicated equation in which one variable was “harmful life forms per square centimeter,” and another was “time in contact.” There were others, as well as a series of unknowns over other unknowns. They bantered back and forth as they considered whether they had covered all of the important elements.

Ultimately, the bite that fell on the floor made its way to the trash. Through it all, the boys were laughing and carrying on about various funny (i.e. “disgusting”) things that could happen to the food to affect edibility.

In my mind, I had to consider how this incident might have been different if I had been eating with two girls. The girls would have immediately picked up the food, thrown it out, and cleaned up the floor.

But in the interest of developing the boys’ talents at creating new formulas, I have some ideas. On Monday morning, I was texting my daughter—who spent the weekend with her father. I told her I missed her. She said she missed me more. “Tough to know,” I texted. “We can measure later.”

Perhaps the boys could write a formula for that.

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