Time for making messes
Saturday evening I came home from work and errands tired. It had been a rainy fall day but by the time I got here the air had cleared and everything had been washed clean. The humidity gone, the air was crisp and invigorating. We seemed on the edge of something new. Time to make a mess.
I am lucky to be married to a very creative person who shares my love/need for making things. After 10 years of marriage we have made quite a few messes together. We are strangely synced in our creative rhythms. It is one of the true pleasures of our relationship. We both work individually on our specific mediums but there are a few we share. Gardening and building/renovating. Brown Dog Farm is our latest project. It might very well last us the rest of our lives. We are going to make a lot of messes.
When I got home, I walked into the sun room and saw that Ed had made an investigative foray into the boarding of the room we spend most of our time in. It is a small converted porch we use as a breakfast room, pantry , entry off our deck. It is crowded, cramped and a catchall. In the winter it is the coldest room in the house. There is very little insulation and its next on the list of projects to tackle before it gets cold. We have both been mulling over the idea of what to do with it all summer, but hadn't really sussed it all out yet. The opened up wall was my signal Mr Hicks was ready to go.
Over a beer , or three, we got down to the plan. I love the creative process of working collaboratively. We have become adept at listening and throwing ideas against the walls and seeing what sticks. We are child like in our enthusiasm and it makes us both feel young to explore options and imaginings. We say 'what if' and 'maybe' and 'could we' and then move those thoughts forward. There is genuine affection, and encouragement. Some things fall away some things surge forward.
It strikes me that this creative urge this ability to be creative together keeps us young in mind and body and is one of the things that binds us in our marriage. Madeleine L'Engle, one of my favorite authors, wrote:
“‘I need not belabour the point that to retain our childlike openness does not mean to be childish. Only the most mature of us are able to be childlike. And to be able to be childlike involves memory; we must never forget any part of ourselves. As of this writing I am 61 years old in chronology. But I am not an isolated, chronological numerical statistic. I am 61 , and I am also 4, and 12, and 15, and 23, and 31, and 45, and...and...and... If we lose any part of ourselves, we are thereby diminished. If I cannot be 13 and 61 simultaneously, part of me has been taken away.””
We are getting older and it is comforting to me that this process of creating this farm is keeping us young and at the same time honoring the years we have, all our experiences helping and guiding us.
So over the cocktail hour and through supper making we created a plan for our newest project and Sunday morning we started making a new mess.