Permission to Play

Lately I've been thinking a lot about permission.

Not the kind someone else gives us. The kind we give ourselves.

Somewhere along the way many of us seem to decide that play belongs to children. We tell ourselves that if we're going to spend time creating something it should have a purpose. It should be useful or productive. We quietly stop doing things simply because they make us happy.

I think that's a shame.

 This month my journal theme is Freedom and Play, but somewhere during the past couple of weeks I realized those words weren't really about playing at all. They were about permission. Permission to follow my curiosity. Permission to try something without knowing where it might lead. Permission to spend an afternoon looking through old photographs simply because one memory led to another.

As it turns out, that permission led me somewhere I never expected.

Like most adults, I have a day planner. Over the years though, mine has become much more than that. It's part planner, part scrapbook, part commonplace book and part memory keeper. It still keeps my appointments, but it also holds drawings, photographs, quotes and little pieces of everyday life. Somewhere along the way it stopped being just a planner and became a record of how I live.

Each month I choose a theme to guide the pages I create and, if I'm paying attention, those themes usually end up teaching me something. This month has been no different.

One of the projects I've been working on is what I've been calling a memory reclamation project. With the help of ChatGPT I've been slowly recreating my parents' home from memory. They bought the house in September of 1976 and lived there for thirty years. It was the centre of birthdays, Christmases, ordinary Tuesday afternoons and countless family memories. I wanted to preserve those memories for my children, my grandchildren and maybe one day my great-grandchildren.

To do that I had to begin looking through old photographs again. Some were digital files I'd forgotten I even had, while others were old paper prints tucked away for years. At first I was looking for details of the house. Was the porch there yet? Where exactly was the ramp? What did the front yard really look like?

Somewhere along the way I realized I wasn't looking at the house anymore. I was looking at the people who made it home. Every photograph seemed to remind me of another story, another family gathering, another ordinary day that at the time didn't seem important. Funny how twenty-five years later those ordinary moments are often the ones that matter the most.

 It also made me realize just how much my parents shaped the person I became. They were very different people, but somehow both of them still live in the choices I make today.

My dad was warm, generous and always willing to lend a hand. If someone needed help, he simply helped. I remember one day after our neighbours had organized a benefit dance to help my parents build a wheelchair ramp. Dad looked around the room and quietly said, "These are good neighbours." I don't think he realized it at the time, but he had just given me one of the principles I've tried to live by ever since. Being a good neighbour isn't something you talk about. It's something you do.

Mom was very different. She came from a much harder life, one no child should ever have to experience. She carried those experiences with her for the rest of her life, but she also taught me determination. She just kept going because there wasn't another choice.

Looking back now, I can see pieces of both of them in me. I inherited Dad's open heart and Mom's stubborn streak. Dad taught me to look outward when someone needed help. Mom taught me to keep going when life became difficult. Between the two of them they shaped far more of my life than I ever realized.

There were moments this week that reminded me just how deeply those lessons still guide my life. I found myself stepping into situations because I couldn't stand by while someone else was being hurt, whether physically or emotionally. I didn't stop to think about it. I simply acted, and it wasn't until later that I understood where that instinct had come from.

If I hadn't had these creative projects to occupy my hands and my mind this week, I suspect my depression would have overwhelmed me.

From the outside it probably looked like I was collecting pieces of an old house. What I was really collecting were pieces of my own story. I wasn't just rebuilding a house. I was remembering what it felt like to live there: the laughter, the ordinary days, the people coming and going, and all the little moments I'd almost forgotten. More importantly, I was beginning to understand why some of the values I hold so tightly matter so much to me.

I started this month thinking Freedom and Play meant giving myself permission to be creative. I think I was wrong. It wasn't really about play at all. It was about giving myself permission. Permission to follow my curiosity, permission to spend time on something that didn't have to accomplish anything, permission to remember and, maybe most importantly, permission to understand myself a little better.

Maybe that's what play has become for me. Not something children eventually outgrow, but a way of giving myself permission to follow my curiosity wherever it leads. This time it led me back to my parents, back to my own story and back to a better understanding of the person I've become.

If you keep a journal, sketchbook, scrapbook or even a notebook filled with random thoughts, don't worry about whether it is artistic enough or useful enough.

Give yourself permission.

You never know where it might lead.

Following Curiosity

Most of my walks naturally fit this month's theme without me trying to make them fit. I don't set out thinking, "I need material for the blog." I simply go for a wander or two, and the story appears.

When I looked back over the week, I realized the story wasn't really about the places I visited. I think it's about what an adventure has become for me. It isn't going to BC or Ottawa. Those were the kinds of experiences I thought of as adventures.

 These days, adventure has taken on a different meaning. It might be following my curiosity down an unfamiliar street, noticing something I'd probably walked past for years, checking on a photography project, or realizing that morning glories are appearing all over the city.

Morning glories became part of a project I hadn't expected to begin. At first they were simply beautiful flowers climbing the trees and covering the raspberry bed in the back corner of the garden. I watched them slowly smother the raspberry canes in one corner until nothing else could grow there. That's when I learned that, although beautiful, they can also overwhelm everything around them. While out on one of my walks, I came across a hedge completely covered in morning glory vines and couldn't help wondering if the same thing would happen there. I've started photographing that hedge every couple of weeks to see how the story unfolds.

 Those photographs are becoming a pictorial essay I'm calling Deadly Beauty. I never planned that project. It grew out of simply paying attention.

The same thing happened with a couple of robins. I didn't go looking for them; they found me. Anyone who has ever tried photographing robins knows they rarely stay in one place for more than a few seconds. These two seemed perfectly content to let me stand there taking photographs until I had several I was genuinely happy with. Those photographs have already become more than pictures. They've inspired a journal page and even a writing prompt. Once again, curiosity quietly opened another creative door.

 That's a very different definition of adventure, and I think many of you will recognize yourselves in it. There are so many things to see if we simply spend the time looking. I don't think these discoveries were hidden. They had probably been there all along. I just wasn't paying enough attention to notice them.

As I looked back over the week, it occurred to me that my adventures naturally fell into two groups. There were the larger adventures, like turning down an unfamiliar street just to see where it led. Then there were the smaller adventures—the discoveries that only happened because I'd made that choice in the first place.

Maybe that's the real lesson. Adventure doesn't always ask us to go farther. Sometimes it simply asks us to look more closely.

Today's adventure can be solitary and unplanned, like wandering down an unfamiliar street. Tomorrow's adventure could be shared and planned—a family meal, a movie, laughter, and time together. It is becoming clear to me that adventure isn't one thing. Sometimes it's wandering without a destination. Sometimes it's making time for the people you love. Sometimes it's both.

As I was writing about my week, I found myself thinking that my July theme of Freedom & Play has quietly been present all along. Freedom isn't just choosing a different street to walk down. It's also giving yourself permission to be curious, to linger, to photograph an empty storefront because it means something to you, and to let an ordinary Friday afternoon become part of your story.

Maybe that's the biggest change of all. I used to measure adventure by how far I travelled. Now I measure it by how closely I pay attention.

 So, dear reader, here's an invitation. You don't need to book a holiday or climb a mountain. Your next adventure might begin by taking the long way home, noticing the flowers growing on a neighbour's porch, or turning down a street you've always meant to explore. You may discover, as I have, that the farther you let your curiosity wander, the richer your ordinary days become.