This piece was originally written in 2014, only to be found while poking around in my drafts folder for something else. The week I’m painting my lawn furniture pink. TY, Universe, for the reminder.
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I sit at the border of the practical and the whimsical, cross-legged on the ground of practical and peering ever so gingerly over to the other side. This comes from a lifetime of thinking about practical things, having been raised by a mother who made practicality a hobby. This seeps into everything; choices from clothing to cars, where to vacation, where to live, what I purchase. I'm whimsical with things I do for others, but never with myself and often not with my children.
It's dry and parched sometimes on this side of the line, constraining and desolate.
I haven't always been this way. I was the kid who was obsessed with rainbows and horses and designing things, the kid who had ideas about things that were outrageous and certainly not practical. When I let her, that kid sits at the computer with her daughter and sides with the eight year old wants the tie dye beanbags instead of the more practical neutral cotton ones. That kid pokes the adult me in the ribs when I shy away from pink. That kid whispers in my ear "she's only eight once, let her heart be free" as she moves the cursor and clicks "complete order" on two wildly colored monstrosities that will take up half of her room. I can see here there, listening to music, hanging out with friends, basking in a space that has her personal mark on it. It's saying "yes" more than saying "no". It's actually saying "why the fuck not?" instead of "I shouldn't".
"Yes" over "no". Processing the "no" and why the "no" is always the first response. Meditating on joy over practicality. Realizing that this hemmed in way of thinking and being has kept me at about 20% of my creative capacity.
In early June, I bought three scrubby little aloe plants on a whim while shopping at IKEA. Mostly because I liked the pots next to them. Mostly because I thought I needed a little color for my window sill. Maybe because aloe plants reminded me of breaking off the spiky, green arms to rub over cuts and scrapes as a child, the plant's healing power working magic in the hot Oklahoma summertime. Weeks later, I broke the black plastic pots away from the plants' soil-encrusted roots to find what seemed like miles and miles of roots wrapped around the base. The scrubbiness of the plants completely due to the constraint of what was going on beneath in the constricted and root bound weave below. I moved my fingers back and forth, loosening the roots, breaking them so they could regenerate and grow, packing around them nutritious soil with room to breathe. Feed the root, the plant will flourish. Sometimes things have to be broken in order to be rebuilt again anew.
