Kate DiCamillo was one of my mother’s favorite authors. She especially loved Because of Winn-Dixie, but my favorite is The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, which my friend, Sonja, happened to bring to our yearly Oregon Coast trip last January. I spent a stormy day re-reading the story of Edward, the porcelain rabbit, who was loved deeply by a little girl, but was too self-involved to love her back. One day they took a big trip together on a ship, but Edward fell overboard. Like every quest, this was when the real journey–and Edward’s transformation–began. Self important Edward with his gold pocket watch and silk jacket and real fur ears. Edward, who was lost to the dark of the sea and re-emerged ragged and heartbroken. Poor Edward. Every time he found a heart companion, he was lost again or stolen. Again and again, becoming whatever it was his new life required.
Not long ago, I listened to Krista Tippett interview Kate DiCamillo on the podcast On Being. DiCamillo talked about the way children see the world with wonder, about how, as adults, in order to survive, we lose that way of seeing, and about how important it is to find it in ourselves once more, to pay attention to the world like we once did: “My notebook that I always have with me is the visual representation of, ‘pay attention; pay attention; pay attention.’ And ‘pay attention’ is wondering and marveling.” This, I think, is the job of artists. We ask our child-mind to take over, and we pay attention to what it shows us.
My mother spent a lot of time with children—when I was little, she ran a childcare center, and later, she taught elementary school. She respected children and valued the way they see the world. She taught me to follow the creative impulse to see everything as sentient: the squirrel currently clambering over my studio roof, the book I left at the base of the maples, and the moss growing on the maples. When I step into my studio, I always say hello to the plants and the photos, the books and the rocks, the dried marigolds and the prints hanging on the walls–the things that give my space life, my daily work companions. When I leave, I always say goodbye.
“Everything’s alive,” DiCamillo told Krista Tippett, “Everything has a heart and soul.” This concept is at the center of my creative process, and it is the way I most want to engage with the world. I want to see the tiny universe held within every creature. I want to slip off my adulthood long enough for the kid in me to step in, slow things down, and observe with curiosity and wonder.
Last month, my friend, Mo, invited me to an interpretive dance performance in Seattle. The studio where the performance was held was in an old building in the University District. The steep wooden stairs were talkative and wiggly. The room, large and open, was full of the evening sun and anticipation, like it was waiting for the chance to let out a sigh and sag a little. It was one of those unexpectedly hot PNW spring evenings, but when the performance began, the fan was turned off, so we could hear the ambient music coming from the back corner of the room—a keyboard player and guitarist, who would follow the movement of the dancers with their own improvisations.
The opening stance: a single man, taut and straining to maintain his angled body upright and motionless, spread wide like a starfish, one hand and one foot holding the weight of his entire body. A woman joined the man, mirroring the starfish. Then another woman, and another, and another.
Two women broke away from the group, one running, the other chasing, until the runner stopped, turned, and embraced the chaser from behind. She guided the chaser’s head, neck, arms, and back, molding the woman she had just fled, until the one being molded pushed away, the force of the push knocking the molder to her hands and knees. Back and forth, the women took turns embracing, escaping. I saw in their tension the push-pull of rejection and need. I saw my daughter and me, my mother and me. I saw how patterns get laid down, one action at a time, generation after generation, and I felt the sense of powerlessness and vulnerability of being a child, the way it felt in my tiny kid body, watching everything closely and seeing the truth of the world, the heart-weary, joyful mess of it all.
They emulate us, children, and, by doing so, they expose us to our patterns, the moves we make without even realizing we are making them. Each moment with a child is an opportunity to pay attention, to see more than what we saw at first. For the dancers, too, and those of us witnessing them, each moment was an opportunity to make a choice: am I following or leading, am I getting molded, or am I the molder?
At the end of the performance, the dancers, one by one, all returned to their starfish stance, but it had shifted slightly. Recognizable but not the same.
I was a child again but not a child.
And the dancers were my mother but not my mother.
And the dancers were my daughter but not my daughter.
And they were no longer themselves but still themselves.
And Edward, too, at the end of his journey, was no longer Edward but also still himself.
Many years later, when the young girl who first lost him over the edge of the ship was an adult, when that young girl, now a mama, found Edward on the shelf of a toy store, her child eyes took over, and she recognized her dearest Edward, and she bought him for her daughter, but also for herself, and Edward finally found a home again. It was the same. But different.