Creative Spaces

I was an only child, which may say a lot about me, but that's hardly the entire story. My parents were divorced when I was still an infant and neither of them were particularly good at the job of parenting so my mother's parents mostly raised me. Until turning 18 put a stop to the required visitations, which were very disruptive to my life, I was shuffled between my mother's apartment, my father's townhouse, and my grandparents' house. "Home" was a complicated word. My father wanted me to call his place "home" but it never really was for me. My mother's place was where I had most of my stuff, so maybe by some definition that was my home. When I stayed with my grandparents I felt more taken care of, supported, and safe than anywhere else, so Maslow might argue that their place was my home. But even at very young age, I knew what it took to feel like I was home.

My bookbag.

I don't know if it's a generational thing, but I remember when I was young my grandparents called a backpack a bookbag. It wasn't until I was older, maybe after 4th grade, when the thing became a backpack. Maybe it was the difference between something specifically to take to school versus the thing I carried with me all the time.

In my bookbag were, of course, books. Emily's Runaway Imagination, Roller Skates, Charlotte's Web, To Kill a Mockingbird, anything by Judy Blume and Beverly Cleary, and anything that had won some kind of literary award. I admit I was a bit of a book snob.

Also in my bookbag were pens and a journal. Sometimes a Madlibs book. Sometimes a deck of cards. Sometimes a few pieces of fruit leather.

At both my mom's place, which was an apartment above my grandfather's law office and my grandmother's antique shop, and my dad's apartment complex, there were excellent climbing trees. Mom and I had a huge walnut tree out back with a swing my stepdad built out of rope and a bit of 2x4. I'd climb up to a large branch that could support my weight but also had a good section for leaning back. I'd hang my bookbag off a sawed off bit of branch and pull out a book or journal and stay up there for hours. Just me and the squirrels.

At my dad's apartment complex, there were crabapple trees in courtyards throughout the place, although one of the best trees was through the breezeway between the apartments where it was said there were people that hated kids. This story was perpetuated by kids, so who's to say if it was reliable intel. I'd run through so the supposed kid-hating adults didn't get me. None ever did, nor were any of us ever threatened. Such was my imagination, though.

Once through the Tunnel of Terror, I'd climb the tree, get set up on a solid branch, and pull out my book or my writing journal.

As I grew out of climbing and became old enough to rent apartments as replacement for those trees, I instead created little nooks for myself where I could read or write or just look out the window and think.

These smalll creative spaces are important to me. I suppose these may be what Virginia Woolf meant when she said "a woman needs money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction". I still carry a bookbag or backpack on long trips or when I go to a place where I know I'll be able to be alone for a bit. Just the other day, my partner and I drove up to Illinois for several days to help his oldest daughter build a privacy fence. I brought my writing journal, a young adult French language book I'm reading, and plenty of pens. Though I didn't get much of a chance to write and was too exhausted after hard days of work to even try to read, I took great comfort in knowing they were there for me if I needed to express a thought or get lost in a story.

Since my wine bar is in very many ways self-serving, its walls will be lined with shelves filled with bottles of wine along with lots of books to read while you're there. When I can, likely before I unlock the doors each day, I imagine myself writing for a few hours, enjoying the colorful silence, savoring some moments in another of my necessary creative spaces.