Edie got the highest score of the day on the basketball shooting game at the arcade last weekend. My husband and the kids came to Minnesota to spend the Easter holiday with me while I’m here doing radiation treatments for several weeks, and so we took the time to spoil them a bit and do some fun things together as a family—and one of those things was putting time in at the arcade. 

My kids, like all kids, love a good game and competition, and so they set out to win tickets on air hockey, pin ball, ski ball, Pac Man, a weird duck game, a motorcycle driving course and countless others, but every time I turned around, Edie was making her way back to the basketball hoop game where the goal was simple—make as many shots as you can in two minutes.

My oldest daughter joined a basketball team for the first time in December, and slowly it has become her 10-year-old obsession. Remember that? Remember when we were that age and we stumbled upon our thing and locked in? Watching Edie dribble the basketball incessantly in the house and then out on driveway to shoot hoops for hours, listening to her report what she knows, search up videos of Steph Curry, and seek out any chance to stand in front of a hoop, reminded me that the ability to really hone-in is what makes childhood such a special part of the whole human journey. And it made me wonder why and how so many of us lose that part of us along the route.

After I said my goodbyes to my family for the week, I found myself alone in Rochester once again faced with more quiet time than I’ve had since I became a mom ten years ago. And while my schedule is busy enough with appointments, treatments and whatever work I can get done remotely, facing down an empty house and a schedule that is entirely mine for the time being had me wondering if, at 42, I am able to lock-in to something that is purely for the sake of joy, like Edie. 

Now, I will say, that I could answer this question with songwriting. When I get behind the guitar following an idea, time does that thing where it doesn’t really exist. Writing music for the sake of writing music has always been my joy, but now that it’s part of making my living, it’s shifted a bit and I’m not entirely sure it counts in the same way.  I did the same thing with my love for photography—turning a hobby into a business might be a generational defect, but I digress…

I want to know:  when’s the last time I’ve been obsessed with something besides my children? Something that I do, not to improve the look and shape of my body, or to develop a skill to be monetized, not to be mindlessly entertained, but something that I would rush home to do without an ounce of productivity behind the thought? Like dribbling the basketball on the concrete slab? 

It’s a good question to ask ourselves, especially in this time of constant device distraction. Having the ability to be entertained at every whim has really threatened our ability to find things within us that light a spark simply for the spark’s sake.

When I was Edie’s age my thing was riding my horse, Rindy. I was old enough and big enough to go out to the pens and catch her myself whenever I wanted, and that’s what I did any chance I got. There was no hope of rodeo royalty in my future, she wasn’t a fast horse or a young horse or a beautiful horse. She was just a horse, and she was mine, and I loved to climb on her bareback and go trotting through the trees, humming to myself. I close my eyes in this quiet house now hundreds of miles away from the ranch and decades from the girl I used to be. I can remember the feeling—no agenda, only time that felt slow and the freedom to kill it.

I stopped at the Walgreens yesterday to pick up some medications. I filled my cart with grown-up things: heartburn medication and lotion, Tylenol and shampoo. I strolled by the small section of art supplies and spotted a pad of blank paper and some fresh markers that looked like they would glide nicely across the page. Before I had kids I used to sit down with my nieces and color with them. I couldn’t wait to have kids of my own so I could drop all my other responsibilities and join them just to color for the sake of coloring. I think about that now and even that feels like duty, like I would only allow myself a coloring page if it was a productive in the way that it was CARING FOR MY CHILDREN!? 

What’s wrong with us? 

I grabbed the markers and the sketch pad and I put them in my basket on top of my mascara and said quietly, “I’ll allow it.” 

I’ll allow it. 

If you need me, I’ll be doodling badly for the sake of doodling. 

And you should too… 

Promise?