Yesterday, May 17th, Sammy Davis Jr, and Jim Henson, both considered to be creative geniuses in their respective fields died and someone paid 82 million dollars for a Van Gogh at Sotheby's. As a fitting end to such a day, my husband and I watched "Dead Poets Society" and I am left to ponder the part that creativity plays in our lives.
Do we have to be creative? Who is the judge of that creativity? Is it merely a fragile monument to our existence, or something more?
For some reason yesterday, even before I had heard all of the news of the day, I kept thinking of my friend's father, Mr. Kannard.
I hardly remember him. I met him only once, a long time ago in Wichita, Kansas. My friend and I had driven down one weekend in her brown '72 Oldsmobile as I recall, the only car she ever bought new and the one which found a premature death in some small Kansas town up by Abilene. I was going to spend the weekend with my college roommate, but on the way we stopped by her parents’ house to visit.
He had retired from the post office by that time because of his emphysema. All I remember of that meeting is a dark room, even though there were sheer curtains at the windows, and a tall skinny man breathing through an oxygen tube in his nose. He had a care lined face, the kind of face that should be stern, but he wasn't...just quiet.
From that meeting though, he remembered me. He would send gifts home with his daughter for me. Little things which he made in his workshop in the basement, since he could no longer do any work which required physical exertion. Little stone animals -- the stones polished until they shone. Carefully chosen smaller stones became legs, ears, and noses, larger stones, bodies and heads. He would finish them off with those little plastic eyes with black discs that wiggle around.
And once, my friend brought me some Christmas decorations. Two carolers made out of acorns. Acorns from a Turkey Oak tree I believe. The shape of the acorns fascinated me so that I looked them up in "Trees of North America."
They were large acorns with fuzzy, prickly, caps which he used for the heads of the carolers. He sprayed the caps white and painted faces; bright big, blue eyes and red lips on the acorns. Then he added brown cardboard cone shaped bodies with cotton trimming for fur.
I don’t recall that I ever sat those carolers out except for the first year they were given to me. They were a little too simple for my taste. But although it's probably been at least 15 years since he sent them home with his daughter, I have yet to throw them out. I probably never will. They were one man's gift to me of his creativity...a precious thing indeed.
He didn't live too many years longer with the emphysema. My friends’ mother is gone now too. But every Christmas, when I take out the ornaments, all the fragile glass ornaments, I find his two snow men made from cardboard, nuts and glue with cotton around the bottom nestled in the bottom of the ornament box, wrapped in tissue which yellows more with every passing year. I find them and I think of him. Occasionally I stumble upon the little rock animals which I have not been able to throw away as well. These too remind me of him. He was only a postman. A postman who's disability forced him to retire sooner than expected. He had nothing to do with his days, so he created. Not great things, not even good things, but cherished things none the less.
And every Christmas as I unwrap those ornaments, I remember once more, a tall, skinny, quiet man who loved to create.
Creativity is so fragile and fleeting. It resides in each of us, in such different ways that sometimes we don’t recognize it when we compare it to what we see in the world. Creativity does not have to be measured by the world’s standards, because it is ours, ours alone.
Often, we don’t struggle hard enough to protect it and it slips out of reach. People, even those we love, will take it away if we let them. Not from vicious motives, but by filling up our time so we can’t be creative, or by something as simple as not acknowledging our unique perspective, whether it be in art, music, writing, or even baking. We don't even have to be good at what we love to do...we just have to love doing it.
I wrote the above almost twenty years ago, but I still have at least one of those little acorn ornaments. It is still cherished. This year, during this season of giving, let's resurrect creativity, both in ourselves and in others. Let's give gifts that truly speak of who we are, not what our money can buy. Let's give someone something they can cherish year after year...something that will keep us in their lives long after we are gone even if it's just an ornament made out of acorns.
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