I’ve been spending the summer caring for my kids. They’re old enough to need stuff to do (I miss those days of plopping them under a ceiling fan to get ten minutes, and oh, the naps!) but young enough that I need to stay more or less engaged in their business. This has left very little time for writing or reading. I try. Of course I do! But I’m interrupted on about a two-minute cycle. They will take a notebook from my hand to “help” me write. They will ask me to put down my phone if I try to jot something in a notes app, or write a quick email.
Yesterday I let my four and a half year olds play all day at the park. Well, from 8:30 until 12:30, when we switched parks for a lunch picnic and picked up my eight year old, and then again from 1:00-2:30. I spent the first hour giving them other suggestions: we could go to the library, the zoo. In desperation, I suggested a trip to the store (I hate going with them to the store, the land of infinite no’s and don’t-do-that’s). But they wanted to play.
I watched three waves of kids and caregivers come and go. My kids made friends, and then said goodbye to those friends. They transitioned through nearly a dozen games, real and invented: pets and emergency and soccer and fire ice and freeze tag.
How much play is too much play? I organized their bathroom breaks and water sips and snacks. I stepped in when it felt necessary, but tried to hang back and watch. And, me: was I playing or working during this time? My work was to facilitate play.
It reminds me of a conversation I had with my brother, about a script he was working on, which he didn’t know how to end. I tried to talk him through it, offered some rather blank suggestions, prompts mostly, that might spur him to the secret ending he had stored away, maybe, all along. It was a no-go.
Then I offered a joke ending, mostly just to make us laugh, since I could tell he was genuinely frustrated. But the joke turned the conversation entirely. We rolled with the joke for a few beats, and within seconds, real ideas started to come. I texted him the next morning with more! “It’s still in my brain,” I said, and it was.
Play is my strength, and structure a vast weakness that threatens the very foundation of all my realities. It’s diagnosable, I have ADHD, so you don’t have to tell me that I might.
Creating play, though, is a kind of work, right? Were we working or playing on the phone? Am I working or playing when I write? I’m in the middle of a rewrite– huge mostly because I’m changing tense which has both detailed and far-reaching ramifications. When I look at my desk, I panic. How many words per day will I need to finish when? But I also have this sense of true fun– the story, reimagined and altered. Another version of a universe that I love.
Oh my kids and their stamina for play! What would I do with a five hour writing day? Could I slip in and out of my imagination for that long? Maybe someday. For now, I’ll squeeze my own play into my off hours, late at night and early in the morning, or daydreaming during a long car ride. It’s something.
Hope that you get a chance to work hard or play hard this summer! Or neither! Or both! If you figure out the difference let me know.