The Creative Mind

Last Thursday morning, the two youngest and I attended an informational meeting with Ms. Carol from Musikgarten, who is guest-teaching kindergarten music at Luke's school this year. Ms. Carol normally teaches music classes for preschoolers, and as she shared her teaching/music philosophy with us, I kept thinking I have got to get Sarah into one of her classes! She talked about using music to guide creativity and imagination, and if there's one thing Sarah has an abundance of, it's imagination.

Perhaps her imaginative streak takes me by surprise because I myself (like her older brother) have always been much more literal and rational; I enjoy thinking about imaginary things, but I need someone else to actually do the imagining for me. For years, I was jealous of my cousin because she had an imaginary friend. At her house, we played with Jubee all the time together, and it was so much fun! But then when I got home, Jubee stayed with Yahna, and no matter how hard I tried, I never could make up another imaginary friend for myself. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but I just could never stretch my imagination quite that far (at least not without help). I actually remember a time that I tried to create an imaginary friend but then never played with him/her because I couldn't remember what I'd named it. Pitiful, huh?

But Sarah is a different bird. And I know this because she brought a new imaginary friend to dinner the other night. (I stifled latent feelings of jealousy; my rational brain is now very useful!)

Her fertile imagination has been evident for some months now. Before she quite got the hang of dolls, she was always taking her stuffed animals and imagining them into life (often as babies for her to care for); lately, she's even turned a few old, broken plastic necklaces into her "baby wattlesnakes" (and God have mercy on the soul that dares wake them or steal them to use as whips [Luke!]).

During our time stuck indoors early last week during the Great North Texas Ice Storm of 2015, the kids had emptied the box of playing cards and bingo games, and while I endeavored (fruitlessly) to get them to play some games with me, Sarah snatched up various small game pieces and started serving them to us as special chocolate treats, fiercely dictating when we could or could not eat them and shrieking if we ate them too soon or behaved as if they were playing dice or game cards rather than a carefully prepared snack. This continued for a good 48 hours, in spite of my best efforts to corral and hide the game pieces after it became apparent that they would be choking hazards for the infant-who-no-longer-stays-put (anyone seen the fourth blue Trouble marker????).

On Wednesday, in the sheer joy of being out of the house again, I took Sarah and Andrew to the museum. Usually, Sarah divides her time between the baby dolls in the hospital area and the shopping carts in the grocery corner. This time, however, we headed straight back to the trolley, where we proceeded to "drive the bus" all over town, going in and out of the trolley every time we made it to a certain destination. We went to the library, the grocery store, and Sonic. And if you've seen our children's museum, you're probably thinking this was brilliant! You are imagining that we walked out of that trolley and over to the book area when we "went to the library" or down to the grocery store area when we "went to the grocery store" or maybe even took a trip to see the babies at the hospital by actually walking over to the play hospital.

No.

Each time, we walked out of the trolley and stopped at an area totally devoid of toys or signs or anything in order to do our pretending. For Sonic, Sarah found the only blank wall in the place, stood facing it for a few moments while she did hand motions, and then turned around holding imaginary ice cream cones for us to share. (And then scolded me when I accidentally took hers...) I did my best to play along and smile and enjoy that funny girl, all the while avoiding the blatant fact that we could have done all of this at home!!!!! 

So perhaps Sarah's imagination can be a little exhausting, and maybe I'll never get used to walking into the guest room to find two dolls and a stuffed rabbit carefully tucked into the bed, and perhaps we will sometimes have to work on the difference between "creativity" and "lying" - but boy, am I thankful for this one-of-a-kind girl of mine!

Now excuse me while I go pretend to eat "candy" that looks remarkably like Bingo chips.