Other than sleeping, there are a handful of activities that invite me to lose time with them and all of them involve story in some form, whether reading a good story, watching an engaging movie, or working at my laptop on one of my own stories. As our girls have become teenagers and gained a sense of time and its passing, they have discovered a few of their own activities that provide this same sense of losing oneself and looking up and saying something along the lines of, how is it something o’clock? Like me, these activities tend to involve some sort of creative endeavor, sometimes drawing, sometimes writing, sometimes reading, sometimes listening to music and walking through scenarios in their minds.
Of all the things that can absorb their time and attention, I believe my favorite of theirs is when they opt to hang out, and, even more, when their hanging out involves some semblance of collaborative work. Creativity, especially when it comes to writing or art, can at times feel isolating or lonely and this is one of the reasons it brings me a deep sense of joy to watch our two teenage creators come together with their work. Even if they choose merely to create in the same space, I love the sound of their laughter or simply their voices drifting down the stairs from behind one of their closed doors.
As one who also writes, some of my favorite periods of creativity have been when I am surrounded by a like-minded group of other creative folks. Perhaps one of my most favorite experiences was when I was living in Boston and a small group of us got together every other week to share our writing, provide feedback, and also eat really good food and drink some good wine. Knowing someone outside of myself was expecting me to show up with pages filled with new ideas and words in a story I was working on was a wonderful motivator; none of us wanted to be the woman who showed up with nothing to share.
Recently, I have found myself craving that kind of interaction. Watching my daughters spend time creating together has fed that desire in me to seek out a way to feed my longing, my deep desire for a creative community. This kind of endeavor can be both scary and also labor-intensive but with little return. For many years after I moved away from Boston I have attempted to recreate a similar creative outlet for myself with little success. I suppose that is one of the reasons I appreciate so much that my girls are able to provide that for one another at this point on their creative journeys. Creativity is intended to provide us joy and connection, and I am grateful for the ways it is doing that for these two remarkable young women. I hope and pray they always find a source that fills their creative souls like the one they have with each other right now.