I spent most of my life thinking I was not creative. When others would talk about their artistic endeavors, I’d joke, “I don’t have a creative bone in my body.”

Creativity was not valued in my youth. Making good grades, completing household chores and babysitting my five younger brothers were important.

Most everything else was deemed frivolous.

Then along came my one and only son, Nick. His birth sparked a creative lust. I needed to express more than my breast milk. Creating this beautiful little boy made me feel like I could create other things.

For the first few years of his life, I scrap booked. I delighted in my pages of cute layouts, decorated with stickers and fancy paper borders. I was mostly arranging pre-cut fabricated materials, but it was more artsy than anything I’d ever done.

Then I tried a drawing class. This took guts. I could draw the outline of a house and I could draw a fish. I almost walked out of the first class when it hit me that my fellow classmates would see my scribblings. But the teacher was terrific and somehow made that classroom a safe place. I was soon drawing at home, in parks, on vacation. I didn’t care who saw my drawings.

And then I started writing. My real passion. I was afraid that I’d have trouble finding topics, finding my stories. But I don’t have difficulty discovering things to write about: only trouble finding the time to write.

I like that my now ten-year old son is growing up in a home that values time spent on creative projects. That he sees me sometimes (but not often enough) choose a morning of writing over a morning of house cleaning. He thinks his mom is creative. He doesn’t know he’s my inspiration, my first and best creation.

By Marianne Lonsdale

Labels: Marianne Lonsdale

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