This morning NotMyBaby’s dad called to say that he’d be staying home from work and NMB would be staying home with him. This meant that I had a morning gloriously free from babycare. I began by preparing for preschool tomorrow. I didn’t want to repeat the frantic post-bedtime preparations of Monday. Once that was done I began sorting our storage room. Cluttered is the natural state of all storage spaces. But when the clutter gets so bad I can’t get to things that I need, it is time to clean out. Our storage room reached that phase sometime last fall, but I’ve never gotten to it. It feels really good to sort through and pitch stuff. I’ve already got a donation box full and a garbage bag full. I’m not done yet.
One of the fun things about sorting a storage space is finding hidden treasures. I found an expensive and beautiful book that was loaned to Howard for a music project 10 years ago. This is probably the 5th time I’ve uncovered this book during a cleaning project. Each time I put it very carefully someplace so that we can return it, then it gets buried until I uncover it again. This morning I handed it to Howard, he made a phone call, and there is an appointment to return the book this evening. It’s nice to finally get that done.
I also found my portfolio of drawings. When I was about Kiki’s age I did a lot of drawing. I still had piles of it. I sorted through and it was like taking a tour of my 11 year old brain. I drew endless pictures of women, all with names. Fewer pictures of men because I didn’t like how they came out. There were lots of horses, and unicorns, and winged horses, and mermaids, and rainbows and dragons. There were also pictures that combined all of the above in various ways. Most of these pictures were illustrations for stories and worlds that lived in my head. Sometimes the stories got partially written, more often they didn’t. Some of the pictures were obvious dreck like the one where I’d gotten frustrated partway through creating a structure layer and scribbled all over it. Why did I keep that piece of paper for 20 years? I threw out the dreck, everything else I kept. All of it was immaturely rendered, but some of the concepts, shapes, and ideas have a power to them. I was captivated by some of those images. They made me want to draw again. I want to try again to make everyone else able to see the beautiful idea that is in my head. I will definitely be drawing from that wealth of imagination as I do more writing (and perhapse even drawing) in the future.
But not today. Today I need to finish the storage room.