Dust Yourself Off

One of the more intellectually obvious, but nonetheless remarkable wonders of parenthood in my estimation are those times when my son has first hit assorted milestones, often not so remarkable in any objective way aside from the fact that he had not done these things before.

A pair of examples came around his second birthday he became an artist of sorts. They he’d enjoyed throwing crayons before, gnawing at their ends, and occasionally scribbling on a wall or piece of furniture, he suddenly became fixated with drawing on paper. I use the term drawing loosely, because his marks were still more unintelligible lines and squiggles than approximations of shapes or specific images. Nonetheless, he tackled them with a passion, filling the two hundred pages of a spiral sketch pad in a matter of weeks.

He started stacking, too. After hitherto only having an interest in scattering, rather than building piles of blocks or foam tiles, he became interested in building small towers.

I watched him at work one morning, precariously piling mixed shaped foam tiles in unsteady formations until they toppled. Each time the stack fell over, I expected his frustration and he did often swipe at the lower remains of what he’d been building.

But then he started building again.

I recognized a certain type of resilience there in the drive to persevere despite failure. Maybe youthful enthusiasm. Maybe naïveté. Maybe a sense of joy in the process of building, regardless of starting over again--or maybe because of it.

I wondered when I’d lost that.

For though I relish the process of creating things--mostly in the written word--I get frustrated when a project isn’t connecting, I drag my feet on revisions, and don’t even get me started on my reaction when a computer crash has cost me paragraphs to pages of content I’d neglected to properly save or back up. Never mind the kitchen failures that led me not pursue cooking or baking with any sort of ambition, or quickly self-squelched attempts to learn to play guitar.

And so I hope my kid hangs onto this spirit. This pleasure in making for making's sake, and a joy in starting over. A commitment to the truism that you’ve got to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start over again.