I was worried having kids would kill my creativity. Instead it gave me a kaleidoscope | Chris Ames
There are days when nothing beautiful happens. But then my son grabs two stalks of kale and says, ‘Look, these giraffes are going to Bunnings’
There are days when nothing beautiful happens. But then my son grabs two stalks of kale and says, ‘Look, these giraffes are going to Bunnings’ On a particularly echo-filled video call with his grandfather, my four-year-old son turns to me and says, “Look, I can hear my reflection.” Something like this happens several times a week – a bit of fresh syntax, conjured by accident, that glistens and lodges in my brain.
After recovering from a bad tumble, he might announce that his “tears have gone home”, or that the best way to make it through a thunderstorm is to “hold on to your brave”. As a writer, I had a lot of anxiety about having children. I was worried there would be a new divide between me and creativity.
But slowly I’m learning to ditch this false dichotomy and start seeing parenting as a creative practice in itself. When my son wants to tell a story and asks me to pick from a list of genres: snail, slug, rainbow or jail. When my daughter ignores her crinkly, fluorescent stuffed animals to instead hyperfixate on the small white tags attached to their hindquarters.
The fact that every game starts with giving something a name, a friend and a location. (After stripping kale to make pesto, my son grabs two of the skinny stalks and says, “Look, these giraffes are going to Bunnings.”) Continue reading...
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