“Does this music make you want to dance?” I felt like dancing, and Youngest was hopping around restlessly nearby while I made lunch. “No, it makes me want to climb up the refrigerator,” she answered.
At first I took this as a perfect illustration of the great difference between us, the introverted play-it-safe mom and the extraverted wild child. But maybe not. The more I think about it, the more it strikes me that maybe it was a better illustration of a shared personality trait.
When I go to a museum, I return home with itching fingers and a head full of the things I want to make. When I read an amazing book, I want to respond in kind—to capture thoughts, feelings, moments, maybe even light itself—in a perfect stack of bound paper you can hold in one hand and call up at will just by opening the cover. When I hear people making music, I don’t want to sit and let it wash over me; I want to join in, to be in the middle of that swirl of sound, adding my voice to the texture.
I wonder sometimes if this isn’t a condition for which people are encouraged to take medication. There is so much I want to do, so much I want to read, to see, to hear, to create, to play, so many challenges I want to take. Then there are all the opportunities I want to give my kids, all the things I want to say yes to. How does a person not explode with all of it? Or climb a few refrigerators, for that matter?
Then again, how many times have I been in complete dismay over the mess? The chaos? How many times do I have to force myself to let go and allow water to spill, paint to be splattered, Play-Doh colors to be mixed and (heaven help me) all the supplies to get used up, dried-out, or cut to pieces? It is a hard thing to want to be good and safe and responsible while also desiring to nurture some sort of familial hotbed of creativity. Sometimes I recognize the creative goodness all around and revel in it. Other times it sort of looks like a disaster.
How easy to forget that these three are actually quite a bit like me. My kids don’t play or create or imagine in straight lines and neat piles any more than I do. It makes for an interesting home life and yes, a messy house.
Sometimes I think the biggest challenge we have right now, as individuals and as a family, is to learn how to channel all that energy. I wonder who will grow up first, Mom or kids? And what would that actually look like? Is it possible you the reader are reading this and thinking that we’re all actually right where we’re supposed to be, learning and growing together?
So far, I haven’t found anybody on top of the refrigerator, but I have to say: these three mysterious beings I live with are in the habit of surprising me quite often. Who could possibly say what is waiting around the corner?
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