My mother was a very creative person.  She came by it naturally through her father and her mother’s father, who were both inventors.  This creativity flows through many of the members of my family in many different ways.  All we got from my father was skeletal deformities, missing vertebrae, misshapen bones, etc.  A has one leg that’s shorter than the other and his pinkie knuckles are shaped weirdly.  It causes him no end of distress because he doesn’t want to be different or stand out in any way.  The leg is hardly noticeable and didn’t keep him from being a champion youth soccer player when he was younger, but he feels his knuckles are freakish.

    He also inherited my mother’s creativity.  From time to time he gets the urge to draw some very interesting characters.  He is heavily influenced by Japanese Manga.  He wants to write, like his mom.  Unfortunately he has his mom’s procrastination gene and while he obsesses and makes plans, he never starts.  I bought him a computer for his birthday and so far all he’s done is download Anime and scan manga, play Go, and I have to admit he learned how to use DOS without a manual of any kind, but it was to play a game.  Once in a while his obsessions change to craftier pursuits and he comes up with some fascinating ideas for things to make.  I wonder where they come from as I wander the aisles of Michaels or try to convince someone at Lowes to cut PVC pipe to lengths he’s specified.  Unfortunately the pipes usually become weapons to pound some poor plastic object to bits.  The boy is a wonder with twist ties and wire.  One time my boyfriend brought home a long cable with aluminum wires inside.  A spent the whole night bending those wires into wondrous sculptures.

    Another unfortunate thing is his inner critic, who is usually much stronger than his inner creator and everything ends up in the garbage.  I’ve squirreled away some of his drawings and origami.  Before the critic got the upper hand I scanned many of them into my computer under the appropriate grade file.  When he was three he painted a wonderful picture of a dragon that hung on my bedroom wall.  When we left our house it got packed away and I haven’t seen it since.  Even when he was little, painting and drawing were occasional activities, but when he did it something beautiful came out of it.  We had the best chalk decorated sidewalk in the neighborhood.

    He was such a pain in the tuccus when he was little, but he was a bright, happy child and I miss that so much.  I tried so hard to give him a varied, happy childhood and I feel like such a failure sometimes when I look back on it and see how he turned out.  I’m not disappointed in him.  I am very proud of him.  I’m disappointed in how unscocial and unhappy he is and how uncomfortable he is - everywhere.