The Road to our Imagination

I have always been a person who lives a significant portion of her life in her imagination. As a child, I relished car trips because as we wandered the roads to our destination, my mind stopped off in far-off places. Who were those children playing on a trampoline in their backyard? Why was that old store boarded up? What was it like when it was brand-new? Who came to shop there? What did they buy? What are those boys doing under the railroad trestle? Looks like they are going for a swim. Will they be safe? My questioning mind rattled off ideas one after the other. I was never bored. My roaming mind kept me company. Some people would say this was some kind of abnormality, some type of learning disability. I never thought of it like that. My active, jumpy, monkey mind took me places I will never actually go and gave me experiences I will never actually have. I am grateful for that. It has made my life rich and exciting.

As a learning specialist, I have been trained to help children with all types of learning differences, including ADHD. However, I never thought of my distractibility as a problem. I display an amazing amount of attention on the things that interest me. I am ever-curious. Why should we view this as something to be tamed and dulled? I have worked with many students who have been diagnosed with ADHD, and they respond well to me because I have shared with them that I have a similar kind of mind and that it is a special, wonderful gift. I don’t excuse them. They still need to learn to be organized and hand in homework, but I also celebrate their wild wonderings. I encourage them to question and think. No idea is too ridiculous. All are welcome in the broadest sense.

About ten years ago, I created The Wonder Studio at my school for the very purpose of giving children agency to create anything they wanted to. They have built cardboard cars, windmills, houses, pizza parlors, and treasure boxes. They have sewn stuffed animals, pillows, and wall hangings. They paint, paste, hammer, and nail with abandon. Some adults look at what they create and see junk, something to be discarded, but the wise ones see ingenuity, persistence, and resourcefulness. To be able to create with abandon is the very foundation of the inventive spirit. These kinds of creative minds are much needed in the world and should be cherished.

This week, while I was working with students in The Wonder Studio, I joked that I was “an old girl.” A student heard me, put her hands on her hips, and said, “Mrs. Emery, you are not old! You are still a child in your mind!” I laughed and smiled at her and told her she was right. That student put it all in perspective for me. Sometimes, I worry about aging, that I won’t be able to do what I love to do. But then I think even if I lose my mobility or become forgetful, I will always have that sense of questioning, wondering, and taking flights of fancy. I keep nurturing that creative joy, whether it comes in the form of a child or a seventy-year-old woman.

This morning, I went back to one of my favorite ways to create – poetry. I logged onto VerseLove and found Clayton Moon’s prompt – writing about a dirt road. Now, you would think that people wouldn’t have much to say about an old dirt road. But you’d be wrong. Poets wrote about all kinds of dirt roads, at all points of their lives, in all different states across the country and beyond. My wonderings brought me back to a place where my mother and father had a summer house, Barley Point Island in Rumson, New Jersey. It was a rustic, rugged place, not a glitzy Hampton hideaway. It is a bird sanctuary, and it became a sanctuary for me in my young adulthood. My husband and I spent many a weekend there listening to the birds, watching boats, and walking the shoreline for treasures.