Back to the Nursery

 

Nursery workers are brilliant. They set up islands of activities in well lit areas. When you toddle in with your youngster you too want to reach for those paintbrushes and leave marks on those white sheets of paper. You too want to sink your hand into the coloured warm bubbly water and play with the boats, and you too can not help but start building towers with the bricks. And indeed when only the little ones are watching… you do!

It is all there ready and waiting and all the child has to do is to begin.

For adults, with their tidied away homes and everything in its place, we think about doing something creative perhaps when passing and glimpsing something on the way from the computer to the kitchen. But it’s a fleeting thought, for within minutes after the kettle’s boiled and the tea’s made, we then troop back the way we have come not deviating from our well trodden path across the carpet.

This happens to me. There are some pencil crayons I glimpse on a shelf beneath a desk. I see them as I go out to feed the fish in the pond. These pencil crayons were bought for the now ex-teenager for one of his school years long ago. He never used them. Twenty-four beautiful shades that each time I see I yearn to touch and use. But the thought is only fleeting. Within moments the fish are holding my attention and I’m trying to remember the names I gave to them; made difficult as they are changing from black to golden and the patches on their bodies keep changing. Then there are the last of the tadpoles the few that for some reason shrugged off the state of frogdom and opted to remain aquatic instead. Their tails are ragged and tinged with white and I wonder why these few lacked the switch to change their being and preferred to stay in the nursery. Perhaps we all should have remained in the nursery longer experimenting with colours and shapes and how things fit together just like these tadpoles. You can see from this just how quickly I forget the pencil crayons. And on the way back inside I don’t see them at all.

The other day I had a brainwave.

A very rare thing for me!

I set up areas downstairs in the house as if it was a nursery. Islands of things to do that might tempt me to stay and linger there awhile.

On one desk I’ve set up paper and the pencil crayons and also a picture of anemones that might inspire. On another there is a pen and a writing pad. By the keyboard I have the first few bars of “God” by John Lennon ready to try. On the coffee table I have placed a book and a book mark that I started to read and then though I glance at it on the shelf I still didn’t reach for it. At each of these places I have set the chairs at an angle as if inviting me to sit there awhile and try it for a moment. The coffee table is also on an angle inviting me towards the settee beyond where the cushions are plump and inviting.

And though these last two days I’ve been out and too busy to try these things I am lingering longer as I pass them by, and studying the picture as if to see exactly how I could draw it. And oh, it’s all so wonderful and tempting as if I’m back in the nursery and beginning again.

And I’m now thinking exactly how does the piano sound in “God”?