susan hayward photography : On Lost Marbles

I've been meaning to address this topic for some time now. Only, I also wanted to shoot some pictures of marbles to go with it and had no time to do so. Yesterday I finally had a few hours to kill before dinner (note that I didn't say I had to kill something for dinner. I had spent the entire day on Photoshop and called my husband to say, "I am not making dinner tonight. Let's eat out." And just like that, I was off the hook. I highly recommend this practice for those days when you just can't face the kitchen. Which is almost every day for me.). So I gathered up my kids' collection of marbles and spent the afternoon laying on the cement driveway, shooting pictures.

Now, about marbles, and how we tend to lose them. (Note how I said we, meaning you and me. I'm assuming you're losing it as much as I am.) Last week a post about the creative habit prompted Michelle to write her thoughts on the subject:

I am developing creativity right now by randomly folding clothes in unique patterns rather than my traditional folds. I try different shots at throwing the diaper into the pail to keep up my athletic skills and you just don't know how I might configure that marble run for my three year old to test his 47 marbles on today. Watch out creative world! I am a Mother today! My painting may come back to me tomorrow as I draw images on the calendar to help my toddler who cannot yet read or to create a responsibility chart to hold my children accountable. : ) I am creative in how I find time for myself while singing one to sleep and nursing another - all while praying in my heart for a little less swelling in my ankles.

When I read this, I wasn't sure if Michelle was serious or not. Although it made me laugh, it also made me stop and think. Michelle has just given birth for the fourth time. In her former life, she was an event planner, but currently she is a stay-at-home mom full time. Michelle is intensely creative, talented in a myriad of ways, and a genuinely gifted people person. Now, you might think she'd have to give all that up--at least for a time. In the usual sense, you'd be right. Michelle no longer plans big conventions or receives a regular paycheck. But she has managed to find ways to keep her non-mother personna limber. Folding clothes in unique patterns is something I might try, though I've made it a personal policy not to fold much of anything. Practicing basketball skills by shooting diapers into a basket is a clever way of approaching a poopy task. And the marble run does use a lot of grey matter--and I'm not talking about the kind of grey matter that's been stuck to the carpet for the last year. As a mother who could never design a train track as well as my husband, I can tell you that designing these structures takes a ton of brain power. Maybe parenting does not involve wearing power suits, commuting to work, or displaying your work in a gallery (not much demand for sculptures made of meatloaf). But it is all about creativity, when you think about it. Why, nearly every day I have to fabricate responses to questions about math and science when my kids ask me for help with their homework. Turns out, I've been honing my skills in fiction without even realizing it. And talk about multi-tasking! Singing one kid to sleep while nursing another, all the while thinking of something else entirely? The average man cannot fathom it. If you can do this, surely you have developed a bionic brain, all without the help of scientists or your six-million dollar boyfriend.

One of the problems with feeling uncreative is not realizing what creativity really means. As Amy Dacyczyn, author of The Tightwad Gazette says, creativity is the process of creating, not the product. "Creativity is nothing more and nothing less than solving a problem in an original way," Dacyzyn writes. As there is no shortage of problems, you will have hundreds of opportunities to practice
your creativity in the next year, if not in the next week. And if you are an artist/mother without any time to practice your art because you have chosen sleep over painting, know that all is not lost. Quite the contrary. You are working your brain in different ways that will inform your art when the season is right to return to the studio. In Escaping into the Open: The Art of Writing True, Elizabeth Berg reminds us that “in order not to cheat yourself, you have to make writing [or whatever your pursuit] a high priority…but you have to live the rest of your life, too; you have to allow room for all that makes you you, for all that feeds you. In my mind being more than a writer means you're more of a writer.”

So the next time you get depressed thinking about how much more you’d rather paint a mural than do the dishes, remember Michelle running lay-ups to the diaper pail. Then dip your hands in the water with the grace of a synchronized swimmer and shout, “Watch out creative world! I am a mother today!”