Play-Doh and Cardboard Boxes
There are lessons that one learns too late in life. Perhaps not surprisingly, many of those lessons have to do with mistakes made in parenting. Despite all the books that teach parents how to raise well adjusted, supremely intelligent, exceptionally talented, and “programed for success” children, we adults nevertheless tend to make the most basic of poor decisions. None more so than in our purchases of gifts for them.
It’s that time of year, and my wife and I are seriously contemplating one of the most time-consuming and consequential of decisions…that is buying presents for our grandchildren. It used to be easy when we were buying gifts for our children a generation ago. Books, dolls, and stuffed animals (not the taxidermy type) were always enjoyed by our daughter. Remember those cuddly Care Bears? And for guys, there were always Transformers, football uniforms, or soccer balls. All would be a slam dunk hit. Smiles all around. But no more.
I remember as a kid playing Domino’s (no, not the pizza variety), Tinkertoys, and Lincoln Logs, (in an era before Legos). And no, my childhood does not go quite as far back as the Stone Age!
Now for our grandchildren we stand in the toy store deliberating minute upon minute. Do we buy the doll who pees when you press on her stomach for $30, or the talking dragon that requires 16 batteries to function, and which only lasts for about 3 days. Or, how about the remote-controlled tarantula?
There’s a lot to consider anymore in buying presents for one’s grandchildren. And in today’s culture particularly, it requires a great deal of thoughtful deliberation.
It’s not so much the money that the decision balances on, but our worries of the emotional trauma that our grandchild might go through if we did not choose a toy most gratifying to them. What long-term psychological scars would he or she carry with them into adulthood if we deprived him or her of immediate gratification? Or if we did not purchase something similar to their friends next door? Or if we purchase something not popular? A grandparent can lose a lot of sleep over these kinds of decisions!
We go with a solar-powered toy car, being gender-neutral, eco-friendly, and non-violent.
We still have some old, and I might say expensive, toys to entertain our grandchildren with when they visit. But what do they most enjoy when they arrive here? It’s predictable. Especially when it’s Ellie and Meghan, who are cousins to one another and nearly the same age, but uniquely different in personalities.
The couch throw covers soon get draped over the card table for their tent in which they hide in mysterious secrecy. Soon thereafter, they get out the pots and pans to pretend they are cooking, serving us delightful salads of moss, leaves, and acorns harvested from our backyard woods. On the outdoors porch, an old, dented pot now contains mud soup, and of course, the small sticks served alongside, I am informed, are pretzels.
Every early morning ritual is first getting out the Play-Doh. Soon the kitchen table is refashioned as an animal habitat, complete with Play-Doh miniature pink kittens, green puppies, and all colors of figurines peacefully roaming about on a wrinkled up multicolored landscape of what was once a white tablecloth.
But their Genesis-like activities of creation do not end there. Provision for their works of creation is quickly imagined and soon to be artfully constructed. Beaming smiles from ear to ear, they discover the saved cardboard boxes in our garage. Big ones, medium size ones, little ones, they all each have a special place in their newly fashioned tabletop village.
With their childhood magic, brown cardboard boxes become transformed into a multicolored painted store, or a red garage, or a sticker-covered house, perhaps with a chimney even or a storm shelter in which to hide and find protection.…all with openings for their figurines to enter and exit. And as they create, there is the constant happy chatter of contentment that tells the imagined stories of their figurines and village. Happy stories…and they will play for hours and hours with a primal contentment not seen with any solar-powered toy automobile.
Their eyes sparkle as they plan their next unique creation, far removed from the glazed over expressions and spaced-out behaviors of the video gamers. Instead, they use their sense of pretend, their imagination, their personal creativity with the crayons, and the tape, and the magic markers, and the scissors, and the string and the glue…spread over the table landscape like an expanding construction zone…
With a sense of purpose and wonder, they delight in creating something new, something unique to their personalities, something that teases their imagination of what could be. They are not constrained by culture’s patterns or colors, its expectations, or forms. They are not mesmerized by a flashing screen of action and violence, nor the artificial addictive stimulation of frantically pressing a button on a control pad. Furthermore, they do not find themselves in a foreign scene created by others. Instead, they are free to dream of what might be, what should be, and who they will become.
Oh, they have their squabbles, and their disagreements. Some days compromise and cooperation are in short supply. But they have to learn to work it out, for their village, like life, is not a perfect one. And they eventually do, after varying lengths of time, and some painful apologies. Because they know that playing together is better and more fun than playing alone.
Gradually, they each shape their individually unique lives, but in the process of working together, like the dance together of two different people. They shape their personal worlds. They draw upon something innate to each child, to create personal character; they dream dreams of imagination built upon their own hopeful possibilities. They delight in the beauty of color and texture, they sing songs, and their melody transforms their crafts into a symphony of the joy of creation, the work of their hands, the satisfaction of building, sharing, planning, anticipation, contentment.
It is a good medicine to watch them play…reminders of childhood innocence, the excitement of mystery, the joy of creation, the wildness of imagination, the freedom of self-expression, the brief moments of perfect contentment. They all teach me lessons often forgotten, though not yet beyond recovery.
And we adults might rightly ask, “why so? What lessons can our children and grandchildren teach us? About play? About entertainment? About imagination? About creativity? About contentment? About the beauty of simplicity?” And we adults are forced to pause and ponder, “What have we lost?”
For it is often the simplest things of life that bring us the most pleasure and contentment, is it not? And those activities we do together. Can we adults choose to be a child again for moments within the days, to taste once more the joys of mystery and imagination? To listen to the whispers of creativity and to experience the satisfaction of heartfelt contentment?
Yes, our children and grandchildren teach us many lessons, and I’m grateful for those. And they invite me to explore possibilities to create something good, something new, something unique…by breaking the shell of adulthood. Write a poem, sing a song, paint a painting, share humor, give a gift.
I’m going to sit down now with some Play-Doh and some cardboard and imagine something new to create and find satisfaction and contentment in the simplest of things. (And by the way, no batteries are required.)
I dare you to do the same.