Creation

You know how sometimes you get so immersed in something that you have no perspective on it whatsoever and even when someone else comments on what you are doing you can't really understand what they are talking about?

Wow, that makes no sense. What I am getting at is that today, this evening, I had a sort of a revelation--a flash of insight into my own behavior. I have been spending hours and hours of hard manual labor and challenging problem-solving and actual lifting of heavy objects--which for me is a rare occurrence--on this ridiculous project I took on of turning an unfinished attic wreck of a "room" into a viable play space for the girls.

It didn't occur to me to ask myself why. They play outside much of the time when we're here, and there was enough room for their toys downstairs and in their bedrooms, and although I am a big believer of not having all the adult space in a house taken over by children's stuff, that wasn't enough of a reason. Not to take on a project so out of my comfort zone, so physically taxing, so detail-oriented, and so dependent on an aesthetic vision for success.

I'm not quite finished yet, but today, I hauled up some heavy shelves for books and toys, some chairs, and the wooden dollhouse my mother gave Lily for Christmas. I started the most artistic part of the project, some lettering on the stairs that is hard to explain, and I brought up dozens of piles of books and puzzles, which the girls helped me begin organizing.

At one point, they were downstairs, and I surveyed the now all white space, a blank canvas just waiting for the bird and butterfly mobiles Lily and I are going to make, the artwork both Lily and Annika will make for the walls. It looks beautiful, I thought to myself, and that's when I realized it.

Sometimes, when you are preoccupied with knotty challenges, you just need to make--not buy but make, with the full involved labor of your own two hands--something pretty. Something that looks just the way you imagined it would.