Invictus

I dream of a capacious light-filled space with high ceilings and bright white walls primed for an ever-changing canvas, storage space cleverly designed to display its treasures for a constant stream of creative inspiration. A large table sits in the center of the room with plenty of surface to spread out and stools to pull in close, inviting into my atelier a muse, a loved one, or any tender-hearted soul with a cup of coffee and time for compelling conversation.  There’s music when the spirit moves me and silence when I’m still.  A comfortable chaise sits in the corner begging me to stretch out and read under the light of a lamp dripping in sparkling crystals.

Twenty years ago, I started a slow fade away from commercial design toward project management. It was a safer place for me, hiring all the experts who would design and build a space rather than being responsible for designing it myself. I haven’t spent much time thinking about why this happened.  I’ve always chalked it up to being a “bad” designer. Maybe I haven’t given myself enough credit.  The notion that I really can’t stand having my creativity questioned and judged is probably closer to the truth.

 

I placed the “bad” designer label on myself when I was challenged by colleagues who didn’t agree with what I was doing, didn’t like my ideas or style. These professionals did this work for far longer than I did, they must know more, know better. Contemplating the experience now, I conclude I’m far more willing to back down stewing in resentment than to stand up and build a compelling argument for my case.  Which is so interesting to me because I can defend my position with the quiet and methodical logic of a seasoned barrister almost anywhere else in my life.  But when it comes to my creativity I am rendered mute. It’s a crippling fear that I now realize limits me.  I’m sure it’s what keeps me from hiring an editor and finally publishing a book.

Selling is a skill I’ve never fully developed.  I would much rather be back stage, comfortable in the role of influencer. Sales is front and center, under the spotlight; a whole other realm.  But one you need to enter if you want to take on the naysayers, defend the relevance of your own work and see the vision in your mind’s eye brought to life.  It’s almost sad how our strengths can unwittingly be stifled, even sacrificed by our own incestuous determination to conceal and protect our weaknesses at all costs.  What kind of designer could I be if I was willing to stand strong in the face of judgement and just sell my heart out?

Creative ideas are born in my mind and killed off multiple times a day. There is no requiem; no flowers at the gravesite.  I move on, in fact, I probably forget more great ideas than I actually execute. Yet these days when an idea dies on the table I find myself compelled to induce CPR with a ferocity I don’t recognize, and I’m the only one who can pull myself off the body and call time of death.

It’s easy to be generous in the face of abundance, to surrender when there is so little at stake.  But when every idea is challenged, when nothing is guaranteed to be a sure thing, I begin to wonder if somewhere in the steady drip of acquiescence or compromise I will wake up one day to discover I’ve lost myself.

And this is the beauty and promise of my dream studio, that one place where my creativity lives out loud, untempered, unapologetic and requires no explanation, no defense.  It’s the threshold that beckons, and when crossed by those who know me well, reveals a haven recognized as unmistakably mine.

I know in my heart that creativity cleaves, that I wear it on my sleeve and it always finds a way.  I know I could no sooner stop its flow if I wanted to.  But I long for abandon somewhere.  It is my saving grace. 

Galoshes

I invite them over to my house for dinner. During the course of the conversation he is having with his brother I learn he is wearing cloth gym shoes to his dishwashing job and coming home at night with soaked feet.  He takes me up on my offer to buy him a pair of rubber boots he can slip over his shoes; I’m on Amazon later that evening making arrangements for them to be shipped directly to his place. 

I know it’s an awful cliché, but this stage – adulthood – IS the hardest stage to parent. Yes, I said we were at the hardest stage when they hit high school, and before that when they went to middle school, and likely before that when they entered elementary school.  I know I definitely said it during potty training, and when I changed diapers, toted them around in a car seat I could barely lift, and woke up to feed them in a fog in the middle of the night. And okay, maybe during childbirth, too. But I really mean it now.

I am not a helicopter parent.  If I were to place myself on the involved parent continuum, I’m definitely farther to the left. This is proving itself to be true as the time between when we all parted ways last summer and now stretches out a bit; more and more stories of my parenting negligence and ignorance are coming to light.  While it’s embarrassing, they survived and I’m certain I’m not alone.  Regardless, all parents spend a fair amount of time doing for their children.

We try to feed our kids nutritious foods, at least what was deemed to be nutritious at the time.  We make sure they get their vaccinations, take their vitamins, visit the dentist regularly.  We read to them, send them to school, do our best to pester them to do their homework. We encourage them to have friends, to pursue their interests, cheer them on at their sporting events.  Yet, all the while, in the background, they are quietly absorbing what they really need from us:  A value system, a sense of justice, a work ethic, resourcefulness, persistence, resiliency. They glean from us how to express compassion and empathy, manage anger and frustration, show leadership, listen for understanding, how to choose to love. They say the beauty of a Liberal Arts degree is the focus on teaching critical thinking.  Isn’t this something we teach at home, whether we realize it or not? 

I know these are things I learned at home.  And maybe it feels obvious and that it all happened by some happy accident because it seems like it was a simpler time.  Our family was large by today’s standards. One salary supported us all. Time and money were spread thinly across many. My parents couldn’t physically do as much for us, but they made sure what they did mattered.  Mom volunteered at the school.  Dad was a den leader for Cub Scouts.  They both taught confirmation classes attended by me and a group of my eighth grade peers in our living room, much to my horror at the time.

As I start to realize what my adult children need from me now, I have a greater appreciation for the parenting my dad has done and continues to do for his own adult children.  Drawing the line between helping out and enabling (and staying on the proper side) takes an enormous amount of courage and restraint. My dad asked us to take out student loans and carry the burden of paying them off, and then one day requested the payment book so he could take care of the balance himself.  Listening without passing judgement can mean a tongue perpetually scarred from being bitten.  I don’t recall ever hearing “I told you so” when I slunk back home after having experimented with some aspect of living that didn’t go as planned.

I now understand that Dad continues to show up and be lovingly present in our lives even though he may harbor wariness or unexpressed disagreement with choices we make, whatever those may be:  Where we live, who we live with, how we raise our own children, how we conduct ourselves in this world. And he somehow finds peace in the ceaseless silent worry for the health, happiness and well-being of his offspring that is starting to slowly strangle me. I can only hope to be this good.

We want to redact our stories, to share only the highlight reels with our parents.  We want them to be proud of our every move. Yet, there are times when we need to expose our flaws if for no other reason than to validate that we are still worthy of being loved. Conversely, as parents we want only the best for our children.  We know we sometimes can’t bear to watch their struggles, and that at any time they could call with news that has the power to break us.  Yet we show up anyway because love for our children makes us impervious; we will weather any storm they bring to us. We show up because love offers no other option.

It’s hard to stop doing for our children and trust that they’re equipped to find their own way. Amazon allows me to get my fix occasionally, to let them know in some small way I am still looking out for them, sending love from a safe distance. Yet if I had it to do all over again, I would do less and counsel more.  Sure, they were responsible for their laundry in high school, cooked their own meals when I was out, secured steady part-time employment at 15 or 16, but despite their burgeoning maturity, I spent a fair amount of time mired in telling them to act differently instead of helping them see why they should want to act differently. While I didn’t always succeed, I strove to be a sounding board instead of sounding off.  And this is what they need more than ever from me today. 

Thanks, Dad, for continuing to do the hard work, for supporting choices you may not agree with, for resisting the urge to tell us we screwed up and you saw it coming, for letting us be our own people, for displaying a love impermeable to our imperfections, and for showing us how to put on our rain gear and head out into the storm. 

Origami

It is supposed to be fun and exciting, using our professional talents in such a personal way.  I am an interior designer by education; I spent twelve years working in commercial design and architecture, another twelve years after that managing the process. He’s the owner operator of his 28-year-old remodeling business.  Between us we have 52 years of  experience. 

Designing and building an addition for our house should be a seamless, efficient process; something we can do in our sleep. And yet, we’re in the eighth month of design and we’re still pushing pencil on paper.  Literally. I think I might lose my mind.  Why is this so hard?

There have been several times over the course of this project that I have questioned whether we should continue.  As more and more road blocks are thrown in front of us, I wonder if a divine messenger is trying to tell us this is a bad idea, or if we’re meant to persevere despite the challenges we encounter.  I’ve asked myself if this is truly our dream or if we are making it our dream because it seems like it’s what we are supposed to do.

 

Alan Moore, in his book, “Do/Design: Why beauty is the key to everything” is bringing some clarity, showing me, in actuality, I am fighting the very design process I claim to know and love. There is no doubt I am in a hurry.  I moved out of my house and put the majority of my belongings in storage ten months ago.  I lost my art studio in the process, and the current living situation affords little space to spread out, surround myself with my tools and inspiration, and create.  

Living in the Midwest means our construction window is dictated by Mother Nature.  As the grass greens, flowers bloom and die off, as June drifts into July, I am fearful our window will close before the first shovel is pushed into the ground.  I know I should be embracing all the planning.  Instead I’m fixated on getting it done.

 

We are, for the most part, aligned on what “it” is, how we want this new space to look, but how it will all come together can’t be seen yet.  He knows instinctively what will happen in terms of constructability, and I know instinctively what will happen in terms of finishes, but neither of us knows exactly. We need the help of some experts versed in building codes and calculations to assist. Yet we’re perennially confounded and frustrated by the fact that they don’t seem to understand us. We’ve told them what we’re looking for in their vernacular, and in as many different words as we have available to us. We’ve sketched ideas with pen and trace.  We’ve resorted to redrawing portions on our own computer-aided design program.  We’ve gone so far as to use white-out (I know). What we’re really asking for is some unconventional design, we’re asking our experts to change their mindset, to think outside of the box. We are pushing boundaries, but we’re supposed to be in order to bring our vision to life.

 

It's easier and faster to simply go along with the first ideas presented to us.  In the name of speed and a bit of impatient desperation, this is my default position.  I’ll make it work, I tell myself, whatever it is.  Let’s just get it done.  He is the master of his trade and I have, at times, underestimated the strength of his vision. I have misinterpreted his curiosity and persistent questioning of the conventional, chalking it up to a mere difference in philosophy.

He is willing to create conflict in the name of achieving his vision. He is willing to cut ties mid-stream and find a more like-minded expert to take us to the finish.  He knows we need to surround ourselves with those who are open to our vision and willing to share it, even if it means abandoning their own. I don’t show it very well, but I am grateful for his relentless pursuit to be heard, and the courage he invokes to challenge and make a change in favor of what he knows can be done. To cite an example in Moore’s book, if our home addition were a piece of paper, it was doomed to be a simple paper airplane that would never fly. Now it has the opportunity to be folded into a beautiful and graceful bird. Our thing of beauty.

It’s leading to some painful consequences and a protracted timeline that feel a lot like failure. But again, this is the essence of design.  We are going through an iterative process of sharing ideas, talking about them and either enriching them or tossing them out. It’s this constant working of the form that brings what’s in our mind’s eye to the surface.

 

I experience this in sketching class.  In front of an impossibly challenging sculpture, foreshortened arms and legs coming at me, I am furiously flipping fresh pages of newsprint. The charcoal glides across the page, first in thin, light lines, progressing to heavy, dark marks when I’m reasonably sure I have the proportions right. Somehow an image emerges from this fervent application, the working of the form.  Two hours go by in an instant and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed myself the entire time.  

How do I put myself in this same place as we work on the design of what will become our place?

As a kid I dabbled in the Japanese art of folding paper. If you skip a step or make sloppy folds you end up with something less than the beautiful piece of art you envision. I know firsthand it takes time, patience and precision to create beauty. The divine messenger tells me so.