Mom’s Morning Pages

My mother doesn't understand my preoccupation with creativity.

Not that she doesn't have an appreciation for it; she just doesn't see the fanfare about basing my work around it.

I send a weekly newsletter about writing, creativity, and making space between who we are and who we tell ourselves we are. This week was about the creative practices and rituals disguised as things that aren’t creative practices and rituals.

She has written some short stories in her time, watercolored a few pictures. Periodically, she would show me one, like, see? You want to paint a picture, you paint a picture.

She likes art; she thinks creativity is great; she understands why you expect your child's kindergarten room to be covered in bright colors and amorphous animals. But she is not someone who sees herself in the work I do, nor does she understand my reliance on a daily writing practice for emotional consistency or mental clarity, or why I'm constantly fighting with the noise in my head. She would ask about my work with frustrated artists, and then look quizzically at me when I would talk about the creative gears: that you could start painting a picture or arranging a collage, and blocks around your screenplay would fall away. It seemed like she didn't get the mechanism, but what she really didn't get was the point. So what if they couldn't write, or cook, or etch, or dance, or whatever? So what of the stopped art, the blocked flow?

As a mom who floated from drawing to interior design to bowling like she was considering entrees from a salad bar, this is easy for her to say. These were things she enjoyed as passion projects, enrichments, moments in time that she could live with or without. But this is also the same woman who sits, like Cleopatra being crowned, in the same spot, every day, and methodically applies her makeup. She does this ritualistically, pausing to take intermittent sips of room-temperature coffee from lipstick-stained mugs, and has done so for as long as I can remember. This isn't a makeup routine; this is her morning pages, her meditation, her sun salutation.

Through the years, the process would be makeshift on the road at beach houses and vacations, adjusted to accommodate table sizes and backgrounds, and sandwiched into whatever schedule slots were available. But it never decreased in importance. There was always time and resources allotted because it was an agreed priority; it was unquestioned. We would jam into a Howard Johnson's hotel room as kids on vacation, and there, on the little piece of bathroom counter, would sit my mom's old school 70's makeup luggage. That was her spot. When I look back, that would be like me busting out candles, some weed, and my journal and saying, "No one touch this sacred space." She could not have carved out a more zen ground zero if she manifested a bonsai tree.

I remember her spreading her stuff out in the car, standing and holding her brushes at gas stations and relatives' houses, making this ritual happen without a thought. Because of course she did. Because of course it was important. Because of course we all agreed.

If you were to ask her if she were creative, she would mention the few short stories and finished pictures, never realizing she has woven her creative practice into her day so seamlessly it's barely visible. But it grounds her, focuses her thoughts, and quiets her mind, all the things you want a morning practice to do. And she cannot be without it, would not be without it, would feel out of sorts and undone without it. So what of the blocked flow, indeed.

I wonder how many "not creative" people have creative rituals and practices they don't realize are creative rituals and practices?

A creative practice doesn't have to be art to pull you from the noise; it doesn't have to be art to ground, relax, and focus you; it doesn't have to be art. It just has to be yours.

You have the tools. Mom will lend you the makeup. Get above the noise.