Summer slipped away this month, and we did our best to savor as much as we could. We are still swimming, and keep picking blackberries on our walks, and I am amazed by how much foraging is still made possible when we know where to look. A lesson in many ways.
I spent September traveling quite a bit for my photography work, and next week my family is preparing to go on a trip just for fun. We are crossing off a few bucket list items-Daniel wants to see “Misconsin,” as we often talk about it while throwing stones into Lake Michigan. “To Misconsin,” he’ll declare. Next week, we’ll stand on the opposite shore and throw stones back to Michigan.
Today’s poem is one that is really reflective of the period of home-creating I am currently in. My days are often filled with mundanities-washing dishes, making dinner, folding the laundry that never ends. Last night while my son colored some pictures, he declared himself an artist and then said, “I’m an artist sometimes but not all the time.” I considered this a moment, the ways we discount our creativity when it isn’t producing something grand or beautiful. I wrote about this a bit in The Art of Play, and it continues to be a pervasive theme.
In fact, I can remember this discussion over a decade ago in Grand Rapids, sitting with friends who were dreaming up a creative magazine that never was made. We talked about highlighting creatives and I wondered, “What if we expand our idea of what makes a creative?” Mechanics, cooks, stay-at-home moms. The older I get, the more I believe in the importance of honoring the creativity in all of us. We all create worlds.
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