I have never regretted the hours I spent lying in the dirt with my small daughter watching ants drag sugar into their nests. Or the time holding my small son’s hand as we followed lizard tracks and hatched our own butterflies from cocoons.
The housework would always be there nagging at me but the lizard tracks were fragile and urgent. Time spent chasing fairies and feathers on the wind is always better than time spent shaking a toddler off your leg as you do the dishes.
When the spouse would roar at me about the mess, I would roar back and slam the door on the offending room and declare that it was fixed. I would try desperately to make him understand that the housework would always be there forever but that the wind was covering the lizard tracks and that small children needed to lie on their backs in the sand and look for dragons in the clouds.
In the spirit of hope and desperation I applied to do ceramics at the art school in 1991. They applauded my enthusiasm and kindly suggested that maybe a bit more of a background in ceramics rather than a couple of adult ed courses would serve my cause better and my application was declined.
I went home and put my dreams away and immersed myself in the business of raising my children and building my home. I was incredibly lonely but I only had so much energy to spare and I needed that energy for myself.
When the lonliness and frustration overwhelmed me I would rage at the night, I would howl at the moon, I would stand in the middle of ferocious thunderstorms and dare the lightning to strike me and when I emerged unscathed from the storm, I would drink some more.
I couldn’t afford proper materials, so I painted the carpet, the doonas, my clothes, the door of the bus and each time the spouse came home he growled his disapproval of the paint and the mess and I would want to vanish into thin air. My children were my anchor and I would walk barefoot in the garden until the energy of the earth soothed my soul.
I was 25 when I applied to do ceramics at the Art school and I was 39 when I eventually returned to clay.
In those rare moments when I experience regret I sometimes wonder where I would be today if I had persevered with my dream of going to uni and then as I read my daughter’s words or listen to my son’s music, I know that I chose the right path at the time and that there is a proper time for everything.
Comments on this entry are closed.
I’ve felt the call to write at different times in my life. Felt it and didn’t embrace it the way I’m embracing it now. The same is true for other pulls I’ve felt, to people, places, occupations. I think we need to not look back and second guess the paths we’ve walked, because really, how can we ever know how it would have turned out? Perhaps there is a deeper wisdom at work.
I’ve been thinking about what you said, about how we see the same moon. I think a lot of us are connected by that same moon. xx
That’s the thing about housework if it’s done properly… it’s never really DONE. Not properly. 🙂
Tearing up over here, Kim. So I am gonna go all quotable quote on you. Ahem. ‘It is never too late to be what you might have been.’ So there. Love your work!
Housework is something you do that no one notices…until you don’t do it.
Embracing ceramics is living in the here and now, not being chained down to a hoovering slave.
I cultivate dust like other people cultivate roses, welcome to the club, it’s a natural gift we gotta embrace 😉
Kim, thanks for the reminder that it is all worth it.
And Brenda, great quote.
Where would I be today, that’s a question we all ask ourselves, isn’t it? I think your kids were blessed to have a Mom like you are!
I remember that thunderstorm. If I recall, you couldn’t speak for 2 days afterwards AND Nan growled at you for keeping her awake half the night. I think you kept half the hill awake. Hehe.
@ Veronica and then a few months after that Forrest Gump was released and I saw that they had pinched my thunderstorm scene.
Clearly the grumbling spouse doesn’t understand that artistic energy needs to be expressed creatively not by dusting. Veronica’s and David’s childhoods sound delightfully perfect. Just look at how awesome they’ve turned out!
I never shook my toddlers off my leg while washing dishes; I stood them on a chair and let them “help” and taught them how to blow bubbles through their hands with the dishwashing liquid.
Children first, second and third. Housework a very poor fourth! Mine was always just enough to keep us above squalor, fed and in clean clothes most of the time. I was good at ‘tidy’ though which tended to make it look as though I did do housework lol! When absolutely necessary I would play catch up with the worst of it at weekends while hubby took over the childcare.
Glad you now have the ‘me’ time to let your free spirit run rampant through the arts because you really are rather good at it 🙂
xox
That’s a great post, loved it.
Girl I had to Google ‘doona’. Great post and I wish I could go outside and yell with the thunderstorms. With you it is allowed as you are an artist and all – with me they would call the paddy wagon.
What a fantastic post….and childhoods by the sounds of it! BG Xx
I would always choose time with my daughter chasing feathers and fairies over housework. And I still do. Time with them is precious, gone in the blink of an eye, and you can’t take back those moments. But the housework will always be there. I don’t know any artist who has a perfectly clean house. I myself cannot create unless there is a little bit of that “oh, to hell with the housework, I’m going to paint all day” attitude. Tackling artistic endeavors later in life makes you an informed artist, it makes you able to see things you can’t see when you’re 25, it gives you an amazing repertoire of experiences to draw on. And it gives you the courage to throw away the rule book. Bravo, I say! Love it!
Are those lizard tracks on your pottery? Your kids are very lucky that you put fun time with them way above housework. Good for all of you!
LOVE the pottery. Can’t wait to see the finished item.
“Wasting” time with children. Perfect. There’s so much time for them to be adult later and so little time for the adults to be reminded of what joys were once theirs.
Housework? What’s that then?!
I am so, so glad that it is now your time to channel that creative energy. I love to see all the things you make, it’s like watching magic happen.
Every struggle we have financially is worth it knowing I haven’t missed a single ‘first’ in my boys lives.. This is their time.. There will be time for me later.. We spent three hours today outside drawing on the concrete with chalk.. I love that we can do things like that.. And hubby knows better than to complain about the mess! Lol
Do you have a studio at home to do all of this or do you go elsewhere? It’s nice work! Housework… I wouldn’t worry too much about it, except I’m a fusspot as you can probably tell by how I easily detect flaws with things around me (including gluten free ‘false advertising’!!)
Hope Isaac’s back to normal, now! 😀