creative happier-ness

sunday morning, ed and i lay in bed eeking out a little bit more of the luxury of the happily supine. we made clyde play with leo in their bedroom (or more like play a continuous record of "no, leo! no! no, leo! no!"), so we could talk uninterrupted for like 45 seconds or so. it hasn't been easy lately. this parenting and marriage and life and work whirlwind.

take two kids, two jobs, sweaty swim lessons, a little sickness, and two parent shifts at the local fireworks booth and top that off with my new martyr housewife syndrome (i've been contemplating creating a proper dishwasher-loading diagram; save me! save ed!) and a helping of ed's unfinished "cleaning out" of his studio garage woe (oh the pester—and disaster!—of the started and unfinished project!), and you have two very fine people caught up in the "messiness of living," as our dr. love used to call it. and two people who simply can't find their way back to one another.

but there's even more to it than that. isn't there always?

in bed, i tried to explain my extreme crabbiness. i said, "i confuse myself. i don't even know what i want. i'm lonely, but i want to be alone. i want to connect, but i don't want to talk. i want you all here, but i want you to go away for awhile. i feel trapped."

he responded by saying, "i feel trapped too."

when ed and i met over ten years ago, he was working toward his bfa in painting. i was working toward my mfa in creative writing. i remember sitting in my room watching him read my poems. i lay on the floor of his funky dirty loft-esque room in a warehouse building, the smell of cigarettes and oil paints all around me. i was in love with all the heavy color and clumps. i fell in love with this painter boy and he also thought it nice that i wrote. we spent our time in bars and used bookstores. we talked about someday collaborating.

little did we know our first real collaboration would be children. and while sometimes it is, a lot of the work of this collaboration is not so creative. therefore, we are stuck. seeking. wanting. desiring. feeling trapped without time or money for our own creative outlets.

ed pretty much gave up painting a few years ago because he just couldn't string together the hours he needed to paint in a meaningful way. he took up fiddling on the guitar out in his studio instead of painting. a couple years ago, i also put down my novel, finished as it could be at that time. i still write poems. i blog. i eat. i read. i do a webzine. i take pictures. i stare out the window. i tinker with things. words. the garden. little crafts and funky projects. even some of my paid work feels creative. i get swept up by pretty things constantly, but it's rare lately that i get that good old rush of finishing a creative project. i definitely feel something's missing as much as ed does.

but yesterday afternoon, all four of us milling around in the hot, sunny backyard, when i saw ed piling up his fuzzy, dry paintbrushes to store down in the basement, i got really sad. in fact, sad doesn't even hack it. i mean, ed has big ideas, great ideas, his own beautiful vision to share. he wants to pour himself into something bigger. and in some ways, i want it for him more than for me. that's how marriage is sometimes. you just want their happiness so entirely—even if it's partly so it can ooze back to you and so all of you can bathe in its glory. his creative happier-ness really can help make mine in a sense.

even though there is give and take and there is only so much money, i don't really feel like only one of us can live a creative life or pursue our creative calling. it's just that i already know and understand that this time, when the kids are small, is temporary. i think once you've expanded to 3x your size and come back a few times, you really do begin to wholeheartedly believe that something so life-sucking can be temporary and therefore can be something you grow to miss. and then you relax a little. a little. but i don't really think ed feels this in these terms.

and i have made a lot of good things happen in my creative life already, and it has coincided and worked well with having children. this has not been ed's experience. in some ways, i already know that i can make things happen. that things will come my way. i don't think ed believes this yet. that probably just means it's his turn right now. his time is here.

i don't have any answers about this dilemma right now. not yet. i just find it's so important to put the big ones out into the universe. the other day i said there were no butterflies on our butterfly bush and then i had a dream about a yellow caterpillar. since then, i have seen four different types of butterflies on that very bush—little golden ones, little white ones, a nice orange one like our ladies we released, and one so plump and yellow and almost the size of our scrub jay friend. one surely grown from that yellow caterpillar i dreamed about.

today, i am just saying my husband and i have so much more we want to give. maybe tomorrow we'll find some new and beautiful way of giving it.

Comments

[Amy]

"i'm lonely, but i want to be alone. i want to connect, but i don't want to talk. i want you all here, but i want you to go away for awhile. i feel trapped." yes. exactly.

i tell chip that i need time not talking in order to want to talk. during the summer, with kids talk talk talking to me all day long, it just gets a little harder.

if you make a dishwasher-loading diagram, send it to chip. it'll make him happy, as he'll then know he's not alone in his belief that if we just got a little more organized, everything would be perfect!

[becky]

That was really lovely. Why don't people tell you about these feelings when you're younger? How difficult it is to be an adult? Prepare you more? Oh yeah, they do. Or they try. But we just don't hear it when it's not convenient -- when we think our whole lives are spread out before us and we can't possibly grow up to be the same person our parents or aunts and uncles are.

Thanks for saying this -- it's nice to hear how someone else out there grapples with all of the endless questions that are life.

[Shannon]

This post is truly beautiful--even in its sadness. But especially in its hopefulness at the end. Life is soooo complicated, isn't it?

[Tracy]

Wow. Great post. You described that "trapped" feeling so well that I've been grappling with, but can't even really come to terms with in my mind, let alone write about it.

[Peggy]

Wow. It's like you read my mind... no, you articulated my LIFE. My husband and I are both creatively originated folk: he a playwright and I a performer... and along comes offspring and suddenly dust collects in the crevices of creativity. I have been struggling for so long (four years: offspring is 4.5 yrs) to find the balance, the time, the EVERYTHING... for each of us in terms of 'alone' time, 'creative' time, 'collaborative' time. Your flashback to the time when the two of you sat together and imagined 'collaborating' struck a cord so profound in me I turned off my computer for a few hours!

We too have struggled all of the things you so bravely put forth in this post.

Thank you for your honesty. You have no idea how healing it is to hear that others are struggling to keep their creativity above the quicksand of parenthood.

[tracey]

Gasp. Trapped. That word makes me cringe. I think everyone with kids can identify and perhaps us creative types feel it even more.

I've been through the fire of which you speak with my husband and I will say there is a light at the end of the tunnel. You might not see it now, but there is. Both of my kids are now in school all day and so much has shifted. It's a matter of time for you before your boys are in school full time, I know, but if you can find some way to remain on the same team, support one another and hold on to the love in whatever form it must take in this messiness of life, you can make it to the other side.

This was such a great post Sheri. So well written and articulated. I loved it. So glad you shared it.

[carrien]

I live this with my hubby all the time. It's hard. I keep thinking that if I could figure out a way to be the bread earner and stay with mt babies that he would then feel free enough to do what he loves. But I don't seem to have achieved that yet.