I think we are all born with the seed of creativity. The potential. Just as with seeds, creative expression must be cultivated… tended, if it is to grow. Great songwriters probably didn’t start out by writing great songs. They wrote songs that they learned from.

So I believe creativity is both born into us, and also developed.

I knew at an early age that I liked drawing. Because I enjoyed doing it, I gained a certain facility with a pen. I saw other kids whose drawings I liked more than my own, and so I doubted my ability. There are many, many artists whose work I admire today. I’m inspired by them, and I learn from them. Their amazing gift does not detract from mine.

Growing up, I wanted to be an artist. I practiced shaping lines into forms. It was entertaining for others and myself, but it really meant very little to me. I didn’t keep any of the pictures.

It wasn’t until much later that I realized I could tell very personal stories through my art. These drawings and paintings got hidden under the bed or behind the couch. I was afraid they would reveal too much. Something vulnerable. And so they did. But rather than judge the real me, people gasped, not in disapproval, but because they were pleasantly surprised, even moved by what I had done.

That response was what I had wished for all the years I tried to please and surprise people.

It was not difficult to do. It was difficult to allow myself to do it.

I think that’s when I realized I had creative talent, and what a discovery that was!

Around that same time, I started mentoring high school students, and teaching art to kids who were homeschooled.

If a person has a proclivity for art, I hope they can realize its power earlier in life than I did.

I have often mused about how my life might have been different had I found my artistic voice before or while I attended art school.

My experiences in life have influenced my style and ability, without doubt. Everything I know has been absorbed through my senses. It is that storehouse of sights, sounds, smells, tastes and textures that give me anything to say at all… that, and the amalgamation of those memories into the story of me.

I am a full time educator in a school setting, and there are certainly a lot of different opinions about our educational system.

I happen to believe that our education system encourages creativity. Last year, I observed high school science students designing and creating projects inspired by Rube Goldberg drawings.

I see students from preschool on up creating art projects that tell stories about their lives and the world around them.

We have an active theater program in our school. Kids are hearing and reading stories. They are cooking. They are learning to capture events and narrate their school experience through photography. They are learning to work in wood and metals, and to think creatively on the athletic field or in the gym. They are using their imaginations on the playground.

I don’t believe that our school is unique, although we are in a town that is known for its artists, craft people and musicians.

I watch YouTube videos from PS22’s chorus, and I know that there are passionate educators all over our country who encourage and celebrate creativity.

There was a meme going around Facebook recently that used one of my favorite quotes by Alfred Einstein to disparage our educational system.

Yes, there are kids who fall through the cracks. There are those who are not fulfilled or supported creatively.

There are kids who aren’t comfortable with the rigors of academic achievement. There are other kids who bristle at the thought of having to be creative.

I believe that we are all creative.

Creativity doesn’t always mean making a piece of art. For some kids, it takes creativity to navigate the bullies and stresses of daily life.

While I believe we are all born with these strategies and the ability to compensate, there are certain kids who discover that art is more than learning the rules and techniques used in two and three dimensional design or the language of music. Those guidelines passed down through generations of artists and scholars before us can be used to tell our story, wherever we are and whatever we face in life.

If I could tell my younger writing self anything, it would be to not try so hard. Don’t try to impress anyone, but just write from your heart. It’s true that I learned something from all the years I spent trying so hard. I don’t think it works to tell someone to be confident, but that is what I would wish for my younger self. We grow into our voice, and I think we need to live through things so that we will have something to say.

I’m hard on myself now, and I’m even harder on my younger self. Maybe it was that my prefrontal cortex was not yet developed. I don’t understand the person I see in my rear view mirror.

The rear view mirror shows us where we were, not where we are going.

If readers know what they want, then they don’t need a writer to deliver it. If I can’t be original, then I don’t think there’s any point. Whenever I’ve approached any creative endeavor with the thought of delivering people what they want, it has been unsuccessful. Creativity is full of surprises.

I don’t know what I’m going to reel in, but whatever it is, it’s been lurking somewhere inside of me. The neural pathways are well worn paths, but if we’re still and open, we can take a less traveled route and find something we didn’t know we remembered. The light of time and experience may give us a kinder outlook on something we attempted to discard. It may give us insight into something that was actually important.

I can’t give you what you want unless it’s something that I find inside of me.

I believe all creative urges are spiritually driven, including writing. I’ve often described writing and painting as meditation.

I open my mind and follow the clues, not knowing what I will find.

The danger in opening your heart to forgive, is that you start to care again. It can be a challenge, but a challenge worth taking on.

I could be wrong about that. Trying to forgive didn’t seem to help me forgive. I didn’t work at forgiving. One day I just sort of realized that it had happened.

When you break up with a partner, the person who was your greatest ally becomes your sworn enemy.

They haven’t changed much, and you haven’t changed much, but your roles have changed. Your expectations of each other have changed.

We get fooled into thinking that our feelings are right, and that they are the most important thing.

They’re not.

It’s just a part of your journey. One person takes an exit ramp because… well they just do. They’re going somewhere else.

Our feelings get hurt because someone said or did something the other one didn’t like. I’m not saying it didn’t hurt.

It hurts sometimes.

Maybe somewhere down the road, your paths will merge again. You never know.

There was something that made you fall in love, or at least choose that person for a time. You’re still those people.

Forgiveness might allow you to share your stories. You might be happy for the person. You might just be happy for the exit.

Either way, the path of your life is the path of your life. It’s a big part of what makes you you.

When I was a little kid, my favorite night of the week was Friday. School was over for the week, and The Brady Bunch was on.

Like a lot of other people, I loved that show. I still do.

As a kid, I dreamed about it. I had an especially powerful dream where I was in the teeter totter episode.

This year, HGTV renovated the Brady Bunch house on Dilling Street, and I’ve been watching the videos on YouTube.

Last week, I dreamed that I was in that house.

It might sound silly to you, but it was very meaningful for me. I’m not sure why I feel so connected to it. Maybe because I miss the house I lived in back when I watched the show. I think it has a lot to do with family.

I can’t connect with our old house in Romeo, and I can’t go and explore the house on Dilling Street.

Just a few minutes ago, after watching some more renovation videos, I walked through my own house, thinking about the sit-com of my life. What is life but a string of situations? And it’s been pretty funny.

There’s the episode where the basement flooded… The one where the drunk guy drove through the fence… or the one where they put dentist chairs in the living room to create a spaceship…

The Brady girls reminisced about time spent in their bedroom on the set, and it occurred to me that I can reconnect with THIS house in that way.

Summer’s room was Madeline’s room, and before that, it was Heather’s room. Raymond’s room used to be my room.

For almost 30 years, I’ve been recording episodes in my brain, and I am still here in this house!

I don’t need to see (as much as I would love to) the renovated Brady Bunch house. Maybe I am just longing for where I am!

I don’t have to add a second story, or compare it to the original set. This is the place! This is the actual space.

It’s hard. I don’t have time to clean. I fought with a Christmas tree today until I finally took it outside. I thought today would be a day for cleaning and making it festive. The regular laundry and dishes pile up, and I have to deal with those before I can tackle anything else. But they tire me out and I give up. I watch YouTube videos or find a quiet place to think and write.

I read online today that resting up is more important than catching up.

The Brady kids participated in the renovation of that house, along with a crew of about 200. I’m just me. I don’t have help. No babysitter. No cleaners. No crew.

This is exactly what I wanted. It’s what I wished for… and I am happy! I get overwhelmed and frustrated, and so I’m coming up with ways to take care of myself.

I draw a hot bath and realize that the messy kitchen, the cluttered closet and lived-in bedrooms are sacred spaces where my dreams come true.

“Do you want to see a magic trick?” the boy asked his friend one day. It was a beautiful springtime day, and the boys were excited for school to be over for the year.

“I don’t believe in magic,” the other boy said.

“I’ll prove it to you.”

“Sure you will,” his friend said, and rolled his eyes. “What are you going to do? Make something disappear?”

“Better.” The first boy answered with a smirk. “I’ll make something appear.”

“Oh yeah? Like what?”

“Something really big. Something beautiful… how about… a tree? A full size tree that will tower over the fence, over the house, and will shade the whole yard.”

“Impossible.”

“Just watch.”

And with that, he dug a small hole, and filled it back in.

The boys stood back and watched.

“Ha! Nothing happened!” The friend scoffed.

“You just have to wait.”

Eventually, the boys got hungry, and they still had homework to do.

The boy’s friend still didn’t believe in magic, and the conversation was nearly forgotten. Nothing can ever be completely forgotten, of course, but information gets tucked away somewhere… maybe buried under other information in our brains.

The school year ended. Elementary school ended. Middle school ended, and then the boys graduated from high school.

They went off into the world and had jobs and families of their own.

They were pretty busy and didn’t get back to the old town too often.

The boy(he was a man now)’s mother got sick, and so he went back to the old house. It needed some upkeep. Nothing too serious… some new gutters and a paint job, you know, that kind of stuff.

The man (who used to be the boy) was scraping the trim on a window, when someone called out to him. It was the boy who had been his friend, but was also a man now.

“I haven’t seen you in decades,” one of them said, as they talked in the shade of a very tall tree.

I used to sneak into the typing room at my school in Jos, Nigeria, to write stories.  I had to sneak, because the typing teacher wanted me to be typing asdf ;lkj, “The quick red fox jumps over the lazy brown dog,” or copying something someone else had written, without looking at the keyboard.  Back then, typing was something not everyone could do.  You had to sit through lessons and practice a lot.

Nowadays, most people can type.  Kids learn it without trying.  They want to use the computer, and that is the motivation.  No one seems to talk about words per minute anymore.  

If you want to get in shape, you can force yourself to do workouts on a boring machine, and try to make it less miserable by listening to music or watching TV at the same time.

I think the best way to get in shape is to want something else more.

The fresh air and view after a hike up a steep trail, a bike ride with friends on a beautiful day, chopping wood for a fire.

There are parts of my life that I like to talk about, and other parts that I’d just as soon forget.

I almost never talk about the time I lived in Portland OR. Eventually, it seems, I come to terms with these periods of my life. I used to say “My life began when I moved to Africa.” Well, that wasn’t true, and I came to embrace, and even long for my early childhood in Michigan.

Yesterday, I looked up Phantom Ranch Bible Camp, where I spent three summers near Mukwonago, WI.

That place holds so many memories for me. Memories that have been locked away.

It all seems so long ago, and I don’t relate to the person I remember being then.

Perhaps one of those places could have become home, as Grand Marais did, in spite of a rocky start.

Maybe an apple tree doesn’t think about when it was a seed or sapling, or the people that pruned it because it reached toward a fence or path.

I tend to write off the painful or difficult parts of my life, and the people I knew during those times. It’s sad.

I think maybe there is still a gift in moving the furniture and wiping away the cobwebs that cover the door.

I keep reading about looking forward rather than looking back. I think there is value in both. We have this unique perspective… the seemingly fleeting moment of now, yet we are continually here (or there). Every moment sits in the future until we step into it, or until it rolls by us, however you choose to view it. Then just as suddenly, it passes into history. We saw that sight, heard that sound, and automatically incorporated it into ourselves. A group of those moments form an experience. A group of experiences form a day. Eventually, a group of days form a lifetime.

I like looking back. I think of people I’ve known. I think of people I’ve loved and people I’ve feared.

I think of my lineage. I also think about the future, my legacy.

A lot of people say we should just live in the now, neither regretting the past nor dreading the future.

What about celebrating the past and looking forward to the future?

The past gives us context. The future gives us motivation, if not hope.

This morning I had the joy of drinking coffee in my bed with two of my kids and one of my grandkids. We snapped a picture, as we often do, because we want to make memories together. We missed out on the first 16 or so years together, and now we treasure all the moments that we share.

We have all had experiences of all kinds up to the present moment. We’ve celebrated and we’ve suffered. We’ve gained things and we’ve lost things.

That’s life. That’s how life works. A happy moment can set us up for a sad moment, when we no longer have the person that made it happy.

I think of my children that weren’t born… the children I wanted so badly.

I think of my children now, and realize they are the ones I was hoping for. That other reality wasn’t ever really an option.

I think of my children that grew up here and moved away. They are the ones for whom this house is a memory. It’s the place where their childhood happened, and it’s now a very mixed bag of memories.

I think of my adult children, my children that didn’t make it to birth, and these precious children that are here now.

Everything changes, all the time.

You see, I was the kid climbing in bed with my parents. It doesn’t seem that long ago.