The Path

Took Demon Baby (and the rest of them) here yesterday as a sort of last big family outing before Oldest leaves for college. Today, I feel like a train wreck. You see, there is joy, there is laughter, there's fun in Demon Baby World . . . but there's no such thing as a straight line.

Demon Baby does not feel that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. In fact, he barely seems to believe in lines at all. Or walking. He jumps, he dances, he walks on the little curbs INTENDED as barriers to garden plants, he climbs on rocks meant for decoration, he pulls you along zig and zag. He falls, he cries, he asks you to carry him. He wants to be on your shoulders. He wants a piggyback ride. He wants to get in the stroller you stupidly brought THINKING he might ride in it when tired. He gets sleepy. He takes a 15-second snooze, and the whole zig-zag, hop, skip, jump, dance, karate-kick, don't-ever-walk-in-a-straight-line agenda starts all over again. I was pulled and tugged and jumped on, occasionally kicked by a stray karate leg. You get the idea.

And I actually, other than feeling like a train wreck, LOVE that. And I thought it really applied to writing. Because I know WAY, and I mean WAY too many writers who have set out a course for themselves, and get discouraged at the first unintended zig-zag. Or too many writers who have heard there IS a straight line and they MUST follow it. Sometimes an unintended consequence of joining certain writing organizations is the idea there is a "right" way, a straight path. It can SEEM that way, but really, everyone's path has a karate-kick or hop along the way. And people can tell you the straightest line, the most orderly path . . . but it's empowering to remember those who walked backwards a few steps before leaping on the curb around the garden and doing a balance-beam thing before jumping off and doing a happy dance.

The way things are now, I don't expect Demon Baby to EVER walk a straight line. And that's okay. The lesson there, of course, is that we should let everybody else who tries a different hop-skip-jump to do the same.

Bet you didn't know Demon Baby taught a course in Zen.

Thoughts?