I am mother to a soon to be 7-year-old girl and a 3-year-old boy. Like every parent, I started out wide-eyed and hopeful, convinced that my kids are special. They can be anything they want to be, I thought, watching them as little babies, their bright little eyes looking into mine. Being the open-minded parent that I was, I exposed them to all sorts of different toys: musical instruments, wooden blocks, legos, dolls, toy animals, etc., in the hopes that this would expand their interests and eventually, their life skills.
Unlike a lot of parents, I never really entertained the thought that they would take after me. There were a lot of other people around them that they could be like. Musicians, accountants, engineers, etc. Their father, who works as an Industrial Mechanic, is a man with seemingly endless practical knowledge. I hope she takes an interest in Math, I thought, when my daughter was starting preschool and I was watching her say “…fourteen, sixteen, seventeen,” with a kind of mental panic. “No, there’s a fifteen in there.” “…thirteen, fifteen, seventeen…”
Eventually, she learned. She also picked up reading pretty fast: she was reading at fourth grade level by the time she was six. But I figured out, as time went on, that–just as a series of videos won’t make your baby into a genius–that you can’t really control what a kid likes based on what you exposed them to. My daughter steadfastly remained insistent that toys don’t really do it for her. I could take her to a toy store, ask her to buy anything she wanted, and she would wander through its halls, unable to decide. If she is eventually coerced into picking something, she would abandon it after half an hour. She still has toys she was given as presents in boxes that she hasn’t opened.
Do you know what she likes? Blank pieces of paper: just like I did when I was her age.
There is, of course, a bit of a difference. I wrote short stories when I was young; she draws graphic novels. But she does this tirelessly, through no effort or encouragement from me. She will wake up and instead of having breakfast, beg for large piles of white paper so that she could spend hours drawing and writing and telling stories. While other people, well-knowing but somewhat clueless, clap and praise her for how good she is, all I can really think of is: my daughter is an artist. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.
My son, for a while, didn’t show the same disinterest in toys or incapability of following a straight line like his sister, so I thought I dodged the bullet there. Then he started talking, and he would add detail to the make-believe stories I would tell him, expounding on them in a way that only a budding writer could. He would create extremely elaborate backstories to his toy dinosaurs, including the various emotions they felt throughout their ordeals. Did I mention he just turned three?
I’m sure a lot of kids go through these phases. There is always the possibility that they will pick up new interests as time goes on and that they might, eventually, choose careers that–while challenging–will not involve a period of self-flagellation and masochism.
But then again, they may not.
I was a writer when I was six. It didn’t stop. I can still recall the stories I wrote and the books I planned. His Master’s Voice. A Faithful Friend. The Adventures of Dagger, The White Wolf. I remember discovering the power of word processors, so that I never have to write on paper again. When I was 10, I was wrestling with floppy disks and zip drives, trying to figure out how I could save my stories while continuing to write on my 1 gigabyte hard drive. I was writing–and finishing–full-length novels by the time I was 13.
And while I know that I cannot really control how my children go about their lives or what they will do with it, I realized that I could at least show them that I never gave up on my dreams. I have to find a way to make this work for me because I don’t want them to lose passion should they decide that this is the path they want to take. It doesn’t have to look like another’s success, but I need to get this writing thing to a point where I can say that yes, it was all worth it. I mean–it already is–but most days, I still feel the pressure. I’ve only got one book out, after all. I’m still at the base of the mountain, looking up.
I guess this is what I get for telling them stories and encouraging their imagination.
Now that you know a little bit more about my hungry brood, maybe you’d like to give The Agartes Epilogues a try…
