Making Edisons

[Originally posted September 4, 2003]

The thread on the home-schooling discussion forum was about giftedness. Is there such a thing? And, if so, how do you know if your child is gifted?

I had just finished reading “Sky of Stone” by Homer Hickham of “Rocket Boys” and “October Sky” fame. In this excellent book, Hickham looks back at the summer between his freshman and sophomore year of college. One of the connecting elements throughout the book is a painting his mother drew on the kitchen wall in their home.

This got me thinking about a painting my father drew on the hallway wall in our home outside of Pittsburgh, back in 1972, while everyone but him was out of town.

It was an “interesting” painting. You would never find it in an art museum. Then again, maybe you would. It’s hard to tell about art. But most people paint walls all the same color. Not my father.

Needless to say, it did not go over too well with the “art critic” he was married to. This prompted the rest of us to deride, rather than applaud, his work. The painting stayed on the wall until we moved. But it was frequently commented on. Our friends always thought it was “cool.” I thought they were crazy.

After reading this book, I sent an email to my father. I mentioned the wall. I applauded his courage and expression. I explained that I have a totally different perspective now than I did then. I am proud that he chose to express himself; proud that he included me in his audience. I should have encouraged him then. In a way, he set an example for his children. He weathered the criticism, the misunderstanding, the derision. But the painting stood.

Having five children of my own now, and home-schooling them, I try not to stifle their creativity, which often leads to all kinds of messes. I sometimes look around and just shake my head. “It will never be clean,” I tell myself as I survey the wreckage. Then I realize that’s not altogether true. One day, it will be . . . empty.

We don’t have pots and pans. They are building blocks for the kids to use. In the middle of the floor.

We don’t have boxes that can be thrown away. They are ships that must be sailed; across floors and down halls.

We don’t have sparkle-glue paint in bottles, where it is neat. We have it on the carpet, where it can sparkle in the afternoon light.

I have yet to find a single workable flashlight when I have needed it. All of the batteries have been spent on light-saber fights against bad guys.

My 16-year-old never knows where his drumsticks are. That’s because to a four-year-old they are not drumsticks, but rather swords, which must be hidden under bed pillows or in closets, because who knows when you will next need a sword?

More forks, knives and spoons have been lost in our backyard, digging for buried treasures, than went down on the Titanic.

We don’t have many of the things we could have. And what we do have is usually in the wrong place. For a grownup. But the right place for kids.

For a grownup, that hallway wall thirty years ago should have been left the color it was. For an artist, it was a canvas, not a wall. I only saw a wall.

“Every child is an artist,” Salvador Dali once said. “The problem is how to remain an artist after he grows up.” I only saw my father as a grownup, not an artist.

Thomas Edison has always been one of my heroes. Now that I am older, his parents, especially his mother, have become my heroes too, because they nurtured his inquisitiveness. They did not answer his thousands of questions with “Because I said so.” They answered each question, knowing that it would prompt a dozen more. But because they encouraged him our world is an incredibly better place.

I tell myself that we are making Edisons. We can try to have a neat and orderly house, or we can have a canvas for our kids to paint on. We chose a canvas. I partly blame my father for that.

There probably is such a thing as “giftedness”. But my father showed me there is also such a thing as “gift wrapping”. It is neat. It is pretty. But it keeps the gift inside. And wrapped gifts are never fully enjoyed.

I ended my apology email to my father with a suggestion: that he find another wall.