Midlife Creative

Hospitality: The friendly and generous reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers.

When I was a child, one of my earliest memories was going to my Grandma Shirley’s house where she always had a full cookie jar ready. There was also ice cream in the cold room, served with chocolate syrup and peanuts. If there was no ice cream in the house, Grandpa would say, “Shirley, we need to go to Dairy Queen and get some “gook” That was the code word for a pint of soft serve chocolate ice cream. We didn’t have a formal invite to go to Grandma’s house, we just always knew that if we rode our bikes over to their house, they would be home with treats ready.

The number of guests, visitors, and strangers my parents welcomed into my childhood home was many. One memory that stands out in my mind is when Dad brought some hitch-hikers home for supper. They were an older couple traveling through town and down on their luck. They joined us around the table for a meal. Afterwards, my siblings and I retreated upstairs to discuss the possibility that the hitch-hikers might have been kidnappers on the run. When we came back downstairs, my dad had invited the couple to spend the night on our pull out couch. I never saw them again after that night, but the way my parents welcomed the strangers with a meal and a place to sleep made an impression on me.

I have found hospitality as a practice. The more I invite people into my home, the better I get at it and the more natural it becomes. In my early years of marriage, I had a lot of negative self-talk that prevented me from inviting people over. These are some of the things I would say to myself.

What if people don’t like my house?

What if I don’t have the right food?

Where would everyone sit?

What if people don’t know what to talk about?

I still have these thoughts from time to time, but I have learned that most people don’t care what my house looks like or if my furniture matches. They are just happy to be invited.

My Motivation for Hospitality:

I want to create a place of belonging and a place to connect people who don’t yet know each other. I want my home to be full of laughter, learning, and listening to stories.

Whether it is planned in advance or spontaneous, the key is saying “YES!” to hospitality. Your way of showing hospitality will be different than mine. Be you! Join me in the friendly and generous reception of guests, visitors, and strangers.

In my last post I shared about the importance of waking up to our five senses. Today, I want to focus on one of these senses that we use every time we put something into our mouth…taste! Sometimes even looking at a picture of a particular food or smelling it cooking can cause our mouth to begin to water. Hot apple pie straight from the oven, soup that has been simmering all afternoon, freshly baked bread, sizzling bacon. Ok, you get the idea.

When I got engaged, my roommates threw me a bridal shower and gave me a jar of spaghetti sauce and some frozen pizzas as a joke gift. In my early years of marriage, my lack of knowledge in the kitchen was quite embarrassing. My husband, Mark, knew even less than I did, and was used to a steady diet of turkey sandwiches and apple juice. I worked at Burger King and Mark worked at Pizza Hut. Between fast food, cold sandwiches, and microwavable food, we survived.

Fast forward to having kids, I don’t think things improved all that much. I had some mom friends that passed along their recipes and gave me a few tips (thanks Brooke and Christa), but we were still in survival mode, eating to live, not living to eat. Our regular rotation was tacos, pasta, pizza, waffles, and chicken. Somewhere along the line, I started paying attention when I was around people who were cooking and asking them questions.

My lack of confidence in cooking had nothing to do with a lack of interest in food. It had to do with my fear of failure. I didn’t want to work hard to preparing a special meal, and then have it end up in the garbage.

A few years ago, I realized that I really do enjoy cooking. I decided to make something that I wanted to make for myself one day a week. Once I got past my need for approval, I found myself really enjoying the time in the kitchen.

I am still a pretty “safe eater” that gets into a rut when it comes to grocery shopping and cooking. I decided to challenge myself this month with a simple idea, and I hope you will join me.

The challenge is this:

Eat at least one thing you have never tasted each week during the month of November.

For the adventurous eaters, you may need to try a new combination of foods or a new spice mix. For me, it will be no problem to find new foods. I could probably fill a whole cart in every aisle with the things I have not tried.

Grab a friend and try a new food together. If you are already having a get together in November, tell everyone its “New Food November”

I would love to see what’s in your grocery cart. Hopefully, we will all find some delicious new flavors this month and our taste buds will thank us!

Have you thought about what it would be like to live without vision, hearing, touch, smell, or taste buds?  I picture a life without senses as a paint with water picture without the water and brush.  There would be no way for the colors and details to appear in our picture without our senses that bring the world to life.  

What if we built a little more margin into our days so we could intentionally practice using our senses?  In music, the places of stopping are called ‘rests’.   Taking moments to pause in the middle of our days help us notice things that we are usually too busy to see.  

Here are a few ideas of how to engage with your senses.  

Stand next to a tree and notice its leaves, its bark, and the shape of its branches.   What can the tree teach you?  What has it been through?  How old do you think it is?

Lay on your back and look up at the sky.  What do you notice about the clouds?  Can you feel the wind on your face?  What do you hear around you?

Deliberately take another route on your daily drive or walk.  Notice things you have not seen before.  Take a little more time getting to where you are going (or end up in a new place that you didn’t intend to go).  How did taking a new path make you feel?

Deliberately change one of your routines.  Order something different at the coffee shop, add a new ingredient to your sandwich, use cloth napkins instead of paper ones, light a candle, listen to a new type of music.   

None of this comes naturally to me.  I really like familiar and rarely step out and deliberately find new ways of doing, thinking, or feeling.   It is a discipline for me to make time and space to activate my senses.   It is a discipline to care for myself and enjoy all the things around me that are waiting to be enjoyed.  

Think about the word enJOY.  

There are a lot of things that I have realized bring me joy.  Fireplaces, the ocean, warm socks, a pretty place setting, conversation with friends, and walks in the woods to name a few.  I  know my list will grow and change as I get older and as I experience new things.  

Make a list of things you enJOY and  hang it up somewhere where you can see it.   Decide which of your 5 senses are used in experiencing your favorite things.  Then, make time for one thing on your list each day.  

I grew up thinking artists were a little weird, but it was a good weird. While visiting an art gallery as a child, I saw an abstract piece of art for the first time. It was a canvas with dozens of objects glued to it. There were fish hooks, rope, scraps of paper, and my favorite object – an orange rubber worm. It left quite an impression on me. At age 10, I mostly liked drawing. It felt natural and a paper and pencil were easy supplies to come by, but every once in awhile, I remember wishing I had more materials to work with. After reading a book about a boy who made robots out of cardboard boxes and tin cans, I attempted to make my own robots. As an eager 4-H member who enjoyed coming up with projects, I remember looking in the fridge and trying to invent a recipe with the ingredients I had in front of me. I also wrote and photo-copied a monthly magazine and mailed it to my ‘subscribers’ for about a year in elementary school.

Fast forward to now, and I’m wondering where that inventive child went?

Is the creative artist in me hibernating or is she trapped somehow and not able to get out?

There is a part of me that is not fully living out the creative life I’ve been born to live. I feel stuck in a never-ending cycle of laundry, dishes, and an honest attempt to pay the rent. It is really easy to ignore this creative artist that is being starved most of the time and hiding out in the back of the closet. I’ve told myself for too long that nobody really cares.

A big motivator for my desire to start writing is as a way to stir up the sleeping artist. My biggest inspiration in the past year has been seeing the creative overflow in my children and wishing to be more childlike.

I want to give you a couple snapshots of this. My older daughters go to an arts high school and every year they look forward to the formal dance, Finale. This year was Tabby’s freshman year and I assumed she would want to go shopping for a dress. When I asked her, she said “No, I think I want to MAKE a dress”. I was skeptical. A few days later I asked again if she wanted to go shopping for a dress. She assured me that she had it under control. She ended up finding a rainbow umbrella, cutting it into strips, and hot gluing it into a dress. Can you believe it? I sure couldn’t!

Another day this year, I found Tabby on the living room floor at about 10:30pm painting a pair of jeans. She had found a black hat with white spots and wanted to make some “cow pants” to match the “cow hat”.

Creative people like my Tabby stand out in a crowd of others who are blending in. Creativity is play and learning to allow yourself to play as an adult can be hard work. Fear, shame, and a scarcity mindset are all barriers to creativity. I am determined to break out of my comfortable and safe routines and discover new ways of thinking in my second half of life.

Richard Rohr says: “We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.”

I have quickly realized that artists need other artists. We can be strong supporters of each other as we birth new ideas and new art. I have decided to form a group called “Midlife Creative”. If you feel a tug to explore this idea, I would love to have your company on this journey to a more creative life.

This is for everyone. We were all made to create. It’s not too late to awaken your sleeping artist.

I grew up defining an artist as “a person who draws or paints and makes a living selling their art”, so you can imagine how surprised I was when someone I respected greatly started telling me I was “an artist” I just smiled everytime she would tell me this, but in my head I would argue, “I’m not an artist!”

Have you found yourself meeting artists on a daily basis? After my friend told me I was an artist, I started meeting such incredibly creative people wherever I went. I began to wonder if they were being sent to me or if I was simply drawn to creative people.

In my adult life, my definition of artist expanded to include actors, playwrights, musicians, dancers, screenwriters, photographers, and any other creative person who made a living doing their art. I was still stuck on this idea that to be an artist, you had to make money from your art. The funny thing is that I have always made money teaching piano lessons, but somehow that didn’t count.

When we moved to St Paul, we found ourselves surrounded by creative people. We were less than a mile from the Schmidt Artist Lofts and a block from Art House North, another community for artists. My kids started going to an art focused elementary school and an arts high school. There were plays to attend, art openings on weekends, and my daughter got involved in a short film. I felt strangely in awe of these creative people and wanted to be around them. I started finding out that even my friends who I thought were “normal” had without my knowledge published a book, played Chopin behind closed doors, and previously owned a sewing business.

There were artists everywhere I turned. I started to realize that we are ALL creative. Every single one of us is born creative. Somehow we talk ourselves out of it and very few claim the identity of “artist”

Why? Why do we not have permission to use this term to describe ourselves? Why can only a few people join this artist club? What would happen if we all started calling ourselves artists? I am going to give it a try. If I call myself a writer, maybe I will become one? Maybe I already am?

What do you wish you could be? Set aside the idea of making money, and look purely at what makes you come alive. What do you enjoy creating? Speak it out, and then start doing it. Call yourself an artist. I believe in you!!