Make-believe for adults, food for the creative
Recently, I told my niece I wanted to be a child again and would pay her to make it happen. She said the cost was $150, and when I placed the imaginary money in her hand, she looked at me with indignation. Real money only. Right. Even at four, she’s no fool. Then we proceeded to go outside with her father and played one-act make-believe skits that had me doubled over in laughter. My brother and I used to play for hours outside in our backyard, imagining we were characters from our stories. I usually made up the rules, being the older sibling, and now his eldest daughter makes up the rules for us. In less than an hour, I was an innocent camper unaware of what lurked behind the garage, and then I was a were-bear, a rhinoceros, a tiger, a sister witch, and a unicorn rider who was turned into a taco after drinking a magic potion. The best part was that I didn’t have to pay a dollar to enter a brief, youthful renaissance.
Earlier that week, I had been weighted down by the stress of certain adult decisions that involved handsome purchases — plumbing and heating and cooling our century-old home. The worry of money, missed government grants, and being played by corporate salesmen, kept me up at night. Boring. I want to live in the world of were-bears and tigers, where unicorn riders must outsmart evil sister witches and avoid becoming transformed into fast food. In moments of play with my nieces, I get to be both the adult and the child, and it’s the most glorious awareness.
Can we ever go back? Are children the only portal to this other dimension? When playing make-believe games, I catch glimpses of the child I once was through the imagination of my nieces. That world, I know, still exists deep within me. But as I grow older, I add layers upon layers of memories, of grief, of education, and responsibilities to the state and home. Then, I meditate and try to shed these layers. It’s an ongoing battle.
I often say I don’t feel like an adult even though I’m nearly forty. I hear others say the same. What does an adult feel like? Because underneath it all, I carry the core of me — a childlike awareness of the world that craves unfettered imagination and creativity, freedom from judgement and the pressure to create for money. If it’s not productive, why are we doing it? That question has been ingrained into us through subtle external channels, and I’m ready to shake it off.
For the past four years, I have been reminding myself that imagination and creativity are not just for my past self or children during craft time. I’ve read books on subject, like Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Big Magic” to examine how other creatives nurture this part of themselves. I’ve realized that just like eating a nourishing meal or going out for a long run, I need to feed my creativity to thrive. Anyone else? In 2023, one of the best nights of the entire year was when I took a mosaic class at a friend’s art studio. She taught us how to cut pieces of glass and transform it into a scene, or pattern. Time literally melted.
I hung the final mosaic creation in the library of my new house, where I can glance up from my desk at the heart-shaped pattern of coloured glass that resemble a salmon swimming upstream under a full moon. Whenever I gaze at it, a feeling stirs that encompasses all the memories of that night: the joyful chatter in the room, my friend’s kind instruction, gourmet cupcakes, blood from cutting my elbow on a shard of glass and all the laughter, so much laughter, but most of all, the tugging sadness that soon I would be leaving this treasured community for a new place — and that I had waited seven years to make time for an art class that gave me so much. Why isn’t it mandatory that we make this time for ourselves? I’d starve if I didn’t eat. Maybe I am starving.
In my new community, I did not wait seven months before diving in. I’m in week one of “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron. I’m doing it with a group of fellow writers so we can be accountable to each other in this process. It means writing three pages every morning. It means a creative date with myself once a week. And other prompts to help us tap into this oft-neglected side of ourselves. What is the worst thing that could happen?
Yours Truly,
Fearless Forty
