Creative Communication
You are the Sun…
I would tell my parents…
I dreamt the Moon and the Sun fell in love…
And, standing defiantly at the end of their bed, arms crossed… huffing in the early morning—I’d start in…
I slept as long as the freighter last night… out in Oyster Bay… pointing and begging my parents to get up and come look… at how long I slept measured against the big tanker… afloat in front of our home…
I would get up in the middle of the night, turn the faucet on, and go back to bed, flooding the kitchen—I’d make a ‘pie’ of all my mom’s spices and put it in the oven (not knowing how to turn it on)… they never knew what they were waking up to and even tried putting a table in front of my door—but I got around it…
I would ask my Dad a lot of annoying questions like… how words were made, and why they were for what… that they could’ve come up with better ones… and I’d go on to tell him… to his exhaustion…
“Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's a way of looking at life through the ‘wrong’ end of a telescope.” - Dr Seuss
Sesame Street and Mom’s' 20-Minute Workout' (three aerobic sessions in an hour)—more like wiggling calisthenics… were our morning TV rituals before school. We were hearty outside kids. Rain, snow—nothing stopped us—but on rare days when we were stuck inside on weekends or grounded… we would all watch hockey games sitting on the floor in pure silence… or else!
Criss-cross apple sauce…
We had a record player that purred George Straight, Tammy Wynette, or Elvis…
We had our 5 pm dinners ‘on the dot’—to Archie Bunker’s All in the Family or The Carol Burnett Show. Our small cabin was one room, really—a couch and picnic table inside—with two small bedrooms sharing one bathroom. My younger brother and I slept in a red iron bunk bed—I got the top bunk (that I regularly fell out of)…
My initials and hearts carved in the wood-paneled ceiling…
Everyone’s family is strangely unique- there are no manuals, classes, or awards for family life… and as kids do, we entertain ourselves as best we can… little detectives looking for clues.
I loved to visit my Father’s older sister, Auntie Marlene, who lived with my Grandmother down the beach… Auntie Marlene was deaf. She fascinated me… how she communicated with animals, especially… I witnessed many gangs of devoted feral cats through the years. They would follow her like the pied piper… I observed her with interest and wanted to figure out the secret language they shared. She loved cats, and they knew it. It was unusual… magical.
She read lips too—but, always called me ‘Bapp-e-ly’—I wondered if that was the same mouthing as ‘Pam-el-a’… and would look in the mirror trying out both to see… still not sure if they are even similar… then, I suspiciously wondered where it came from…? I liked her name better for me… it felt ‘otherworldly’…
A large framed picture above the librarian at the public library in Ladysmith was one of me at 5 years old… enthralled in storytelling—it was transportive, safe, and my favorite place to be…
I believed every word…
My Dad once told me that I could ‘dig a hole to China’—so I secretly tried… I worked on it daily and covered the hole with a board behind the blackberry bushes… I wanted to get there, get somewhere… else?—while my mom wondered why all her spoons were bent and disappearing…
My imaginary friends… who I turned to for comfort… blessed me with an undeniable thirst for drama, make-believe… and inner strength.
I held many secrets… I was surrounded by people who did bad things and then told me not to tell others—or else. What was or else? I thought… couldn’t be worse than this. I just kept wishing… maybe I could fast forward… time is an illusion…
When I find little toys and marbles in my garden, my first thought is of faeries, elves, gnomes?—but recently, I have wondered—did I plant those for my future self to find…?
"Artists are people driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide.” - Winnicott.
Life is wild.
Love,
P
