On the life you create
Sometimes all it takes is a change of scenery
What does it mean to be creative, to live creatively? Could it be a way of seeing what is right in front of you and choosing to make it something new?
I’m sitting in seat D across the aisle from my spouse Janyce at the back of the airplane. My computer bag is on the floor at my feet and my backpack is in my lap. The two of us are with my sister-in-law Agni and father-in-law George waiting for the plane to lift off for the flight to Fort Lauderdale. The next day, all four of us will board the Island Princess for 10 days at sea.
“Please ensure that all aisles, exits and bulkhead areas remain clear,” says a woman’s voice over the speaker. Directly in front of me, one of the flight attendants is making hand motions and a baby is crying a few rows back. George is sitting in between his two daughters in the three-seat row to my left, wearing his red Shriner’s hat and green tinted mirror sunglasses. Agni is squeezed beside him and the window, looking out.
This past summer, Janyce and I joined her dad at a “thank you” barbecue hosted by the realtor who sold his apartment house in Brookline within a matter of days. “What do you think about going on a cruise?” said George, sitting across from us at the picnic table drinking his craft beer and removing his hat to wipe his forehead. “I don’t know dad, where would you want to go? said Janyce. “I think I’d like to see the Panama Canal,” he said. I finished chewing my bite of pulled pork grilled cheese sandwich and slapped my hand down on the table, “Let’s do it!” I said.
It’s late morning on the tarmac and bright sunlight is filtering through the cracks in the window shades illuminating the overhead bins and casting bright stripes on the walls. I grab Janyce’s hand and our arms make a V shape spanning the aisle as the plane starts to accelerate.
“I hate this part,” I say to the man sitting beside me to my right and lean all the way back in my seat closing my eyes. Once the airplane has finally leveled off, I open them again to notice my seatmate is an older gentleman seemingly the same age as George. He has pulled his tray table down and deposited a copy of The New Yorker magazine along with a thin paperback book. I open my backpack to search for a pen and pull out the thick novel I brought with me to read on the trip.
“I read that one,” he says. “It’s very good and a perfect story for a cruise because it’s a page turner.”
A week ago, Janyce remembered that she wanted to bring a small tape recorder on the trip with her to capture her dad’s stories. It arrived from Amazon just in time. I look across the aisle at her. She’s nodding at her dad who is talking into her ear. I watch her take out her laptop and open it to her personal finance spreadsheet while her dad looks over her shoulder asking questions I can’t hear. “This cruise is a chance for me to get to know my daughters,” he said to me in the airport while we were waiting to board the plane.
I turn to my seatmate to my right and start asking him questions about his trip, the book he’s reading, what he did before he retired, the love of his life. He asks me equally probing questions about my own life and the conversation flows between us. Turns out he’s an artist living in Boston and was a painting teacher to high school kids for many years. We talk about creating and writing.
“I’m writing now every week because I don’t want to wait any more to do this,” I say. “But I suppose it’s never too late to write.”
“Oh no,” he says, “It is too late—it will be. You need to do it now.”
The flight attendant stops her cart at our row and offers us our choice of Cheez Its or shortbread cookies. We both choose the cookies. Across the aisle, Janyce has opened her bag of Woodstock organic raw almonds and is doling out handfuls to her father and sister.
“I’m 82,” says my new friend, “and when you get to my age, the drive you have to write—to communicate something—well, that drive will go to other things,” he says, taking a bite out of his cookie. “You won’t care in the same way, because you start to think about all of this ending.”
Last week, I went to an exhibit at the List Gallery on the MIT campus by artist Becca Albee. The intimate and meditative show features delicate photographs she took of tracks in sand and video footage of horseshoe crabs moving about on the beach at night. In the exhibit, she has purposefully positioned her work alongside bits of emails, notes, and other seemingly random images from another artist. About half of the work is her own, and the other half is from the estate of Robert Blanchon, her mentor and friend who died 20 years ago.
I’ve been thinking about this exhibit since I saw it, about how carefully she juxtaposes the random bits of ephemera and Blanchon’s actual words with her own images to change the context and create new meaning. One work on display features a piece of Blanchon’s writing that reads: This would be the time to ask all of the questions you’ve been hiding from us. Although the show contains disparate items and ideas, the exhibition as a whole makes perfect sense because of the way Albee culls from past memories to bring them forth into the current moment.
What does it mean to be creative, to live creatively? Could it just be a way of seeing what is right in front of you and choosing to make it something new?
“You need to see this exhibit before it leaves,” I say to my new friend. “There are a lot of parallels to your life, I think. “
After the barbecue this summer, Janyce and I talked that very same day about not waiting any longer. “This is the second time he’s mentioned going on a cruise,” said Janyce. “I think we should do it as soon as we can.”
“I agree,” I said. “It will give you and your sister the time and space to create new memories with your dad.”
The four of us stand close together on the balcony looking out at the cruise ship that embarked before us in the distance. George is looking through the binoculars.
“There’s a cargo ship out there” he says.
“Has your dad been on a cruise before?” I say to Janyce who is standing next to her father. The sound of the wind over the whitecapped water below drowns out his voice and I can’t quite make out all the words.
“He’s been on boats before, smaller ones, and submarines,” she says. “Dad, what was your longest time on a submarine?”
I can’t hear his answer and Janyce doesn’t wait before asking him another one.
“Dad, tell us about that time—you remember that story— when that one guy smelled so bad and all the other guys grabbed him and threw him in the shower.”
“Oh, that wasn’t on the submarine, that was during basic training,” says George. “They got out the lye soap and I swear they scrubbed the living daylights out of him.”
It’s late afternoon on day two of our vacation and the ship is finally moving. Billowing grey clouds slide to the left while the four of us rock slowly to the right, watching the aqua water blending into a midnight blue along the horizon. Janyce and her dad are laughing, his arms flailing as he tells the story again. It’s a cherished memory we’ve all heard before, a bit of the past, but somehow on this narrow deck, and at this moment, overlooking the vastness of the ocean and sky, it almost seems new.