A Creative Renaissance

{Prompt: Write a story about learning something new.}

I entered a creative renaissance, more or less, with the beginning of the new millennium. It came about because of the relative absence of demands upon the higher cortical functions of my brain.

Celebrating the new century

You see, by January 1, 2000 (Y2K), I was done with all the acquisition of knowledge that was required to practice medicine (which is quite a lot, I can say.)

I had finished twelve years of basic education, four years of college, four years of medical school, a year of public health, three years of medical residency, and three years of group practice.

I was pretty much free from all forms of academia, and free of the need to rigorously process and incorporate didactic knowledge. I had a sufficient mastery of family practice to work without additional study. I was ready to try something new — something creative.

At the bus stop on the first day of school (8/20/2000)

The same year — 2000 — my kids entered elementary school, starting their own academic careers at Bugg Elementary School, a magnet school in Raleigh that emphasized a paradigm of learning that stimulated the “multiple intelligences” of a child. I don’t pretend to know the full extent of the theory of multiple intelligences. I just know that Bugg Elementary encouraged children to learn through activities such as art, music, and drama. This, roughly, is when I, too, began a decade of creativity in the arts and crafts.

When they entered Bugg Elementary, Jasmine was already taking piano lessons, and Samantha was playing the recorder. Sam even played the Australian national anthem in front of her Australian first grade teacher and class, to an enthusiastic reception.

We signed them up for a drama camp around about third grade, and unwittingly unleashed a lifelong obsession with theater and the performing arts. Their obsession was intensified by attending Broadway shows in New York City, and a West End revival of Mary Poppins in London. The spectacle of light and sound must’ve engulfed their senses and seeped into their veins.

In addition to those exposures to music and drama, I created a bit of an art studio on the third floor of our house. I had a drafting table perched above a dozen drawers of art supply bins, next to several shelves of how-to-do-it art books.

I had a multi-pocketed travel case filled with my favorite art supplies: pastels, graphite pencils, and charcoals; watercolors, acrylics, and oils; and art-paper pads of every color, texture, and weight.

I took our girls to Michaels regularly to buy more art supplies — stamps, stencils, scrapbooking materials, markers, miniature Christmas trees, cross-stitch floss, precut mattes for framing photos, and more.

I discovered that Michaels had a room for doing group craft projects with children, and I took them back periodically on Saturday mornings to do a group craft in the “party” room.

Artist kangaroo - from polymer clay.

There was a period when polymer clay molding became the craft of choice. Samantha and I completed a pretty good anthropomorphic sculpture of an artist-kangaroo. Almost perfect, but the feet and the haunches were a little out of proportion. It’s rustic.

I attempted an oil painting just once — a copy of a photo of Montezuma’s Castle in Arizona — but the paint took so long to dry that I didn’t dare attempt an oil painting with the children.

I prefer the more fluid medium of watercolor to be honest, and I took a watercolor class in Cary, but even though I liked it, I didn’t really pursue it further. I was just dabbling in everything.

I began to cross-stitch for pleasure, starting with a simple kit called “Live Well, Laugh Often, Love Much” - a pattern of a woman in an apron decorated with hearts. I changed the hair color of the girl in the pattern to match Dianne’s. My first cross stitch went to her.

Dianne’s Cross-stitch.

I went on to complete a harder pattern — a counted cross-stitch — for my mother, with the words of an old Methodist hymn set against the scene of a field of sheep. I gave it to her in a personalized frame with a plaque, and it still hangs in her house in Stanley.

Ultimately, I completed an epic pattern — The Fantasy Sampler, by Teresa Wentzler — which portrayed a princess with a flute, sitting in a field with a dragon. Within the decorative border, a different beast lay in each corner — a gryphon, a unicorn, a lion, and Pegasus.

It took me at least a year to complete. It includes large areas of cross-stitch worked over one thread (instead of two). It was much harder. It was riddled with mistakes that only I can see. I gave it to Samantha, probably on a Christmas, with assurances to Jasmine that her sampler would be coming soon.

Samantha’s Fantasy Sampler (pattern by Teresa Wentzler).

But by the time I completed the Fantasy Sampler, for Sam, I was exhausted with counting linen threads, untwisting knots in the floss, holding the frame in my left hand, and working the needle in my right.

We moved on to other activities. We were building model rockets to blast into the air. It was the revival of an activity that I once had done with my father and brother, many years before. The girls were pretty adept at this craft. They only really needed me to set up the launch pad and ignition system. And then the rockets zipped up into the air so fast you could only see the puff of smoke where they had been a second before. One summer they signed up for a rocket camp, out in the country, with a Lutheran organization. Those crazy Lutherans.

Books, Birds, and Beyond

It wasn’t all arts and crafts. We did some other things, too. The twins were reading books prolifically;, including each J.K. Rowling book as it was released. I didn’t think very highly of the representation of the (foster) parenting adults in the first one, so I didn’t read any of the others. In contrast, I enjoyed Philip Pullman’s books much more, and read the whole His Dark Materials trilogy. From time to time I read one of the fantasy or sci-fi books, that they enjoyed, just to stay in the loop.

In middle school, they joined a “Battle of the Books” club, and I joined them in reading a greater variety of books than usual. These books, written for adolescents, were some of the most disturbing works of fiction that I had read since Watership Down or Slaughterhouse-Five thirty years before.

Touching Spirit Bear, and Milkweed, are two that especially come to mind. Spirit Bear gave the most graphic description of a bear attack I have ever read, or seen, and Milkweed gave an unsettling description of the Warsaw ghetto and its effect on the central character—a boy.

The cover of Spirit Bear.

At first I read the books, meaning to create flash cards for the kids to use to prepare for competition. But after reading the selections, I came to realize that the genre of modern juvenile fiction was deep, dark, and sophisticated; perhaps the most meaningful form for dealing with difficult and polarizing issues that I have ever encountered. I began to read the books for their serious content.

About this time we also became obsessed with birding and the night sky. We collected a lot of ornithology and astronomy guides. We went out with binoculars to look for birds, and with telescopes to look for stars.

But we attracted dozens of birds to our own backyard with a small investment in a proper bird feeder, with a baffle and a stabilizer. We observed nuthatches climbing up and down the bark of our pine and oak trees. We observed Downy Woodpeckers, Waxwings, and Red-winged Blackbirds — my favorite with their screeching calls. You can see them perching on a willow by every neighborhood retention pond.

(I also started collecting Wild Republic birds, which are stuffed animals with “authentic bird sounds provided by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology”. They still sit lurking on a high shelf in Jasmine’s old room.)

A red-winged blackbird (photo credit: Matt Felperin)

At night, we went out once or twice to Lake Johnson with a newly purchased telescope, looking up at the night sky and trying to find different constellations. But first we had to try to set up the scope with proper orientation by the light of a small red LED. We found that the sky was so vast, and the earth moving so unexpectedly fast on its axis, that finding individual stars, galaxies, and star clusters was a challenge. One moment it was in sight, and the next it was moving out of the field of view. Astronomy is hard.

Science Olympiad.

With the renewed interest in these—my previous childhood pursuits (I haven’t even mentioned the stamp collecting)—I began to think that my children might have an interest in science and math. I volunteered to “assist” in the Science Olympiad club that Samantha and Jasmine had joined at Dillard Middle School. (The Big Bang Theory, was in its second or third season, by the way. Coincidence?) A neighbor, Kim Barritt, who lived at the other end of our street, was the science teacher who supervised the club.

So I jumped into Science Olympiad with the gusto of a true science geek. I think I started “assisting” with a construction game that involved finding the best solution for a mechanical problem, working in teams. Each team had a Ziploc bag of identical construction materials, and tried to build the tallest structure, within the given parameters. The kids were chattering with excitement. There was laughter. There were groans. It seemed to be fun, for them and for me.

Later we tried a “Write it, Do it” activity. The club was divided into teams of two. The first team member was given a completed object, and they tried to write down, in step-by-step directions, how the object should be constructed. Then the second team member, who hadn’t seen the object, tried to construct it from the written directions and the constituent parts. It was chaos. Beautiful, hilarious chaos!

Pretty soon I was completely invested, creating a curated collection of age-appropriate books and materials on subjects ranging from oceanography and meteorology to forensics and pathology.

I tried to convince Jasmine that she was bound to enjoy signing up for “Crave the Wave” because our world is burgeoning with a beautiful and complex array of light, sound, and liquid waves. And… furthermore… the mystery of wave-particle duality in subatomic particles is a perfect example of the ineffable beauty of scientific inquiry. She just didn’t get it.

A representation of wave-particle duality.

Ultimately, most of the kids just wanted to do one of the mechanical events. They wanted to build a bottle rocket, or a rubber band glider, or a Rube Goldberg machine, or a robot, or a trebuchet.

And who could blame them?

But there was a catch. In Science Olympiad, the machines were not only built… but they were also calibrated. In other words, building the machine was only half of the task. Once the machine was completed, it was expected to be tested, calibrated, and (potentially) improved.

That was a whole new level of preparation, for an adolescent contestant. Even for an adult, it was hard. In my own life, most of my projects were barely completed by the deadline. To plan ahead for testing and revisions of a completed project was extraordinary… bewildering… and a bridge too far for most of the kids.

Still, I think that they came to recognize its merits. Success or failure in the competition came to depend on the rigor with which engineering and scientific methods were embraced.

Tower and bridge constructions were visibly shattered when they couldn’t withstand the required force of weight. It wasn’t just a metaphorical shattering of hopes and dreams.

Jasmine built a contraption to drive an egg within inches of a wall on rubber band power, but with time running out, she failed to test it with an actual egg attached. Fatefully, during competition, when the egg was attached, the contraption did an unexpected wheelie, and veered off course completely. Lesson learned.

Jasmine (right) and a friend, with gliders.

Of all the activities that we did in preparation for Science Olympiad, my two favorites were the ones for “Food Science” and “Road Scholar.”

For Food Science, we had to prepare batches of chocolate chip cookies, but we had to use different forms of sugar, and vary the cooking times and temperatures. I think we spent most of a Saturday in the kitchen making chocolate chip cookies, observing remarkable differences in the outcomes, and making plans to spend the rest of our lives in pursuit of the perfect recipe.

Road Scholar was an event focused on surveying and orienteering. In preparation, I went out to Umstead State Park with the boys who had signed up for the event. We attempted to follow a set of orienteering directions with a map and a compass, making our way off the beaten path, and marching straight through the woods, hoping that we would navigate our way to the right location. It was a bit like searching for a geocache, but in the days before smartphones had reached their full potential. In a way, it felt as if we were lost, but we were not lost. We were just finding a different way to get somewhere.

I came to realize that if I had been a contestant in Science Olympiad back in my own middle school days, I could have easily entertained a career in food science, surveying, meteorology, or engineering.

Ironically, I really did major in engineering at Vanderbilt, but somehow they sucked the joy right out of it. In Science Olympiad, all the joy of discovery and design came rushing back.

A tower straddling a homemade template.

In the end, our small band of contestants didn’t win, but did respectably well in the regional competitions. Some of them crushed it, and some of them got a little crushed. But they all tried, and they all had team spirit. I watched as bottle rockets spun out of control, balsa gliders veered off course and robots got stuck. I waited nervously at the classroom doors to find out how our students performed at the testing stations in all those book-intensive subjects.

We got Dillard Dragon t-shirts made (one of the parents was a graphic artist) and we went out and painted our club mascot and school name in the Free Expression tunnel at NC State before the competition. And, at the end, we all sat in the bleachers to see the final results, as trophies were awarded at the closing ceremonies.

2008 Dillard Drive Middle School Science Olympiad team

Claire Nelson, Sam, and Jasmine with prizes and a duck.

Postscript

At the end of the decade, in 2010, I left my job at Garner Family Practice, and I opened my own practice, called Village Family Practice of Holly Springs.

I spent my Saturday mornings taking care of payroll and updating the Quickbooks account. I spent my evenings completing notes in the electronic medical record, and preparing bank deposits.

I was moving into the realm of a small business owner, dealing with marketing, finance, compliance, and service. The days of art and engineering were over.

Village Family Practice logo.

In 2009, Jasmine and Samantha went to high school, first separately at Raleigh Charter and Middle Creek, then together at Raleigh Charter. They more-or-less avoided science and math, shunning the chance to become doctors, biostatisticians, food scientists, or engineers. They were young and foolish.

I forgave them the zeal with which they developed a love for Shakespeare and Aeschylus. I allowed them to go on and on about the philosophy of Heidegger and “ways of being.” I watched them learning lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. I let them watch Glee.

We reunited briefly to obsess over college applications, but they only glanced at my spreadsheet of university options dismissively. In the end, they went to a school with a reputation for medicine and engineering, but located adjacent to a performance hall, and near a theater district.

They secretly majored in the humanities — Music Performance and International Studies for Samantha, and English and Journalism for Jasmine.

Now my binders of Science Olympiad rules, tips, and reference materials gather dust in the attic. A complete set of handmade science-word flashcards still sits in its card case, unused. The Rube Goldberg machine, in the crawlspace outside, is slowly decomposing.

The acrylic paints and indelible ink markers have all dried up and been discarded.

The telescope has been sold to an optimistic young college student living nearby.

The bird feeder has been dismantled to make room for Maggie to chase her magenta-colored spiky ball.

The Wild Republic birds keep a silent vigil in the guest room, formerly Jasmine’s bedroom, on the north side of the house.

The model rockets have been returned to their creators.

But in 2019, I retired.

A new era of creativity has emerged.

I make barn quilts.

I write stories.

I even finish Jasmine’s cross stitch—the Camelot Sampler.

It’s a new beginning—a renaissance.

The Camelot Sampler—for Jasmine