Space to Be - November 2011 - BS-C

By Stephanie Allen Crist

When I first descended the warped steps I couldn’t have imagined that I was entering my own domain.  Annexed behind the laundry room, cordoned off with concrete, two bare rooms awaited the unwary.  On the main floor two different rooms stood ready to use.  The open space on the main floor became the playroom:  a strategically-located wonderland of toys set aside for our four active boys.   A short hallway away stood a den of wood and tile.  This space was obviously dedicated to the learned craft of writing and serious thinking.  So, my husband took the bare rooms in the basement and called them his cave.  Like a cave, shadows reigned.  A dank mustiness permeated the space.  Stale paint encrusted walls and floors in shades worse than unadorned gray.

I stayed in the light and beauty of the main level.  I covered the wooden walls with knickknacks and enlightened sayings.  I put up bookshelves to store my collection of knowledge and stories.  I stretched out in the clean, enlivening light of day and typed to my heart’s content.  But my open space accumulated distractions as my knickknacks accumulated dust.  My beautiful fairy figurine—a gift to celebrate the character of my first novel—lost one wing, and then another.  Toddlers invaded my bookshelves, coloring on my treasures.  Pages ripped from reference books made distressing confetti.  Stamps became stickers.  A stack of envelopes licked by little tongues and daubed with watercolor-soaked fingers stuck together in an abstract testament to their artistic temperaments.  Day by day, moment by moment, my children clamored for my attention, shattering my concentration, making the pursuit of my aspirations little more than a foggy dream.  Still, I kept to my den, a place of light and open air.

The children grew.  Bigger, noisier, and more active, they intruded further into my space.  They begged for privileges and treats.  They lamented over games and toys.  They jockeyed for their turn on the computer.  Sometimes they just sat behind me, jabbering away their own precious stories.  Slowly, my craft lost ground to the ever-present, lovable discord.

My inspiration died a quiet, noble death.

I thought it would be easier:  raising a family, managing a household, building a writing career.  I wanted to do it all, all at the same time.  I remember reading Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time and The Arm of the Starfish.  From that saga, I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up:  I would be the kind of mother that’s always there for her children, a novelist who tells magical stories that sweep children off to new and different worlds, I would be a marine biologist who swims with dolphins, and, of course, my house would always be clean.  By the time I turned fifteen I had become realistic.  The whole marine biology thing had to go.

Motherhood, bills, and business classes dominated my time.  My den—a refuge for my dreams—became a beehive of higher learning, video games, and YouTube marathons.  My writer’s soul subsisted on homework assignments and blog posts.  I chocked it up to life, knowing I could always return to my craft when things quieted down, which they must.

So my dreams died, and I let them.

But the needs of the soul lie deeper than the mind, deeper than the heart.  Neither wants nor desires can temper the yearning at a person’s core.  Obligations, commitments, even love can only delay a person’s fundamental compulsions for a time.  Eventually, the self within a person—that ethereal spirit that dares to dream—will rise to the surface, effervescent and inescapable.

Like a waking giant, my inspirations and aspirations rekindled.  A glowing coal in the back of the brain recognized my need.  It started with a yearning for silence, for solitude, for peace.  Surrounded and engulfed by my husband and our four boys, feminine sensibilities gave way to practicalities.  Yet that longing for the otherworld of the imagination, of thought, of exploration glowed faintly in my mind.  I retreated.  I retreated to the night.  I retreated to the quiet.  I studied for my classes.  I wrote my assignments in peace.  I conversed with my fellow students on the discussion board.

It wasn’t enough.  I retreated again.  This time I ventured into the basement, now abandoned by husband.  I wrapped myself in sweaters and studied in the underbelly of our home.  I cleared out the cobwebs and sucked the spiders into the vacuum cleaner.  I dusted and polished, lit candles and burned incense.  Like a child in womb, my imagination fed on the nourishing solitude.  Like a flower bursting through the cement, my aspirations grew in the darkness and the gloom, flourishing by digging roots deep into the earth.

Stephen Sondheim wisely wrote, “Dreams come true, not free.”  There are costs to living one’s dreams.  And those dreams change and grow as we learn from life’s unexpected miracles.  These dreams that drive us are not always patient, but I learned that I don’t have to be prepared to follow my heart.  It’s just something you do. So, as life happens around me, I have to remind myself that it doesn’t have to be perfect; I just have to play my many roles with everything I have.

In the depths of the earth, the seed sprouts, grows, and sheds a sweet scent.  Like a cave, the shadows reign in my writer’s haven.  A dank mustiness still permeates the space.  Stale colors encrust walls and floors.  Unadorned gray marks the entry into my hidden domain.  Yet, without all the daily distractions, my imagination digs deeper, enriched on visions that have never been, but will come to be through me and me alone.  The dream that died arose stronger and more demanding than ever.  Tucked away deep in the underbelly of family and home, my writer’s soul flourishes and grows, championing the light from the resounding darkness.

Stephanie Allen Crist is a freelance writer of non-fiction, fiction, and poetry.  You can find links to more of her work at www.StephanieAllenCrist.com.