Taking the Summer Off

 

As an artist and mother, I’ve always worked year round with an occasional family vacation. And believe me I full intended to keep on, keeping on regardless of the changes in my life. In fact, I can get very stubborn about sticking to my work schedule which I’ve developed over the last 20 years. 

But now, I just can’t. 

Life changes and losses have hit me hard, leaving me feeling overwhelmed. Unresolved grief is sapping my energy. The more I fight it, the harder it is. Finally, I figured out forcing myself to keep marching ahead is just not working. 

Time to chill. 

As the traditional school year winds down, I started to remember my childhood summers. I biked to the woods and rested under trees. I read outside on the neighbors covered patio. I splashed in the community pool and played hide and seek after dinner until it got dark. 

I think the key words here: Play and Rest. 

While I love creating in clay and paint and glaze, my goal is to make work that sells. And I’ve been showing and selling my work for over 20 years now. Yes, my work has changed and so have I. When mentioned that to a fellow artist, she said that art is supposed to evolve. I felt a weight lifted. 

A balance of work and play and rest. Yes. 

There’s always something that needs to be done, but do I have to do it right now? Probably not. And has my creative work become less fun? Probably yes, because it’s become work. With all the life changes of the past 3 years, I’m exhausted.  I need time to feel the losses. Feel the sadness and tiredness. Find ways to heal and fill my soul again. 

And as much as I want to feel better fast, the more I push, the worse it gets. I can feel that what I need to feel better is to stop pushing myself. I need to slow down. But I know myself and doing nothing is not the way out either. 

The other day, the 3 C’s came to me. Three things I can do: crochet, clay and cleaning. Crochet is easy and comforting. Clay, now for play only, helps to feed my soul. And cleaning helps to clear my mind and my home of cobwebs. 

A summer to rest. 

Let myself live easier. 

Breath by breath. Step by step. 

Doing things that comfort and clear. 

And bring more ways for me to play. 

Happy Thoughts.

As I sit here on the window seat, a cool, sweet breeze flows past me.  The sky is blue.  The clouds are white and fluffy just perfect for seeing faces and animals and daydreaming about the stories of their lives in the sky.  

Do they know it's summer? Are they bored just floating up there?  Do they ever do anything?

As a child, summer was vacation.  Summer was riding my bike through the woods all day.  Skating up and down all the streets in my neighborhood.  Swimming all day in the neighborhood pool.  Going to the store to buy candy.  Summer was reading on my friend's covered patio from the stack of books I collected weekly from the local library.  Learning to embroider from my friend's mother.  Summer was playing ghost in the graveyard after dinner in the dark.  Or playing the Game of Life.  Little did I know that Summers for the rest of my life would never be the same.

Long, lost summer.

It's a slow process from child to adult and summer gets lost along the way with tricycles and stuffed animals and Nancy Drew mystery books.  We all go through it.  We go to work.  We have children.  We watch them play all summer as we fold the laundry and make sandwiches.  I loved watching my children play make believe in the backyard.  I helped them make pirate ships and castles to sail away to their very own wonderlands in the clouds of imagination.

Now, I want mine back.  But is it even possible?

As I sit on the window seat feeling the fresh, sweet breeze I'm curious.  And I wonder, why can't I have my summer back? Why not be a modern day, female Peter Pan?  Travel the world in my imagination where I am captain of my own ship.  Where is Tinkerbell when you need her?

Poof. 

I am captain of my own ship.  Yes, I am.  I walk in the woods everyday in my own neighborhood.  I still read book after book, usually at night.  Instead of embroidery, I throw and paint clay.  And every night, I sit on the window seat and watch the sun go down eagerly awaiting the time when the sky turns Maxfield Parrish blue with rose silhouetting the hills and trees in the distance.   

Think happy thoughts.

My summer isn't lost after all.  I can sit on the window seat and read and sip ice tea and look at the clouds and dream. Maybe what I need to remember is not my childhood summers but Summer's now.  And how easy it really is to just sit and be.

Happy Thoughts.  That's all it takes, doesn't it? And, maybe a little help from Tinkerbell.