My paintbrushes were still for most of the break, and that could have made me cranky. This holiday, however, creativity showed up in unexpected ways.
Two days before Christmas, Covid forced a sudden reconfiguration of our family gathering, turning our house into holiday central for my parents. Having hosted off and on for almost 30 years now, planning holiday menus is still fun but hardly an adventure into the unknown.
And then Thing1, our newly-minted adult, and Thing2 gave it a creative twist. Avid cooks, they asked if they could take charge of the main courses.
I’m no dummy so of course I said be my guest (the forgotten Achilles’ heel in my plan was that neither of them is an avid dishwasher). Turning them loose on the main course menu, meant reconfiguring side dishes, and suddenly planning a holiday meal was an adventure again.
I thought the rest of the break would be in the studio, but my sister, having been cheated by Covid out of a family gathering, invited us to Connecticut for the next weekend. I am as outgoing as a slug in the winter, living under the electric blanket until the cats wake us up to be fed, but knew we should go.
It turned another lesson in the value of letting fate run things.
Each of us running half an empty nest, my sister and I found our families creating new traditions as adult siblings without our parents. The pay off was a reminder that sometimes the family you choose is the family you grew up with, but the weekend had just begun.
We used the trip to catch up with the Big Guy’s sister and our other adult nephew at his music production studio in the same town. It was a chance for Thing2, an increasingly serious musician, to a few hours as a studio musician while the adults caught up over coffee.
Thing2 rarely lets me videotape his playing. All my brag videos are concert bootlegs and snippets of impromptu shows, but suddenly we were blessed with hours of unguarded music.
I hadn’t painted a drop in weeks, but creativity had permeated every minute from all directions. And therein lay a lesson that I recognized only as I was walking to my car after work the day after break, energized and ready to return to my studio.
Sometimes finding your creativity as much about the feeding of your soul, as it is in the exercising of an idea.