My mother will reach the remarkable milestone of 95 years of age in a few weeks. She is healthy in body and happy in mind. I marvel at her resilience, knowing that she has has lived through the Depression, WWII, the moon walk, the 60’s revolution, the cynicism of the 80’s, the rise of computers, cell phones, digitized media, Facebook, 911, Climate Change and Covid.
Having known her for more than 50 years, I have witnessed her consistently transform her joys and concerns into art. Even at the dinner table, paper napkins would become little figurines or geometrical folded patterns, while our theatrical and rambunctious family would volley for her attention. She was always performing some kind of alchemy with her hands, calmly making meaning and beauty out of the materials at hand.
My mother was born in 1927 in Greenwich Village, New York City. Her parents were artists. When she was 2 years old, Black Tuesday heralded the crash in the stock market and the Great Depression began. All hell broke loose around the world as the newly rising industrial age teetered over with the weight of speculation. She remembers her mother standing at the stove making huge pots of soup from their little garden, and people sleeping under blankets on their floor. In those early years my mother was often sick and spent months in bed exploring her imagination with paper, pencils, and paint. Her mother sat at her bedside, when she had time, reading to her “The Wind in the Willows” by Kenneth Grahame. No doubt “Toad’s” adventures made it clear that having wealth often created more “crashes” in fancy motor cars than the life of down home badger and mole who focused on friendship and sharing what little they had.
I wonder, as humanity is thrown into another century of top heavy domination and resource grabbing, if we can listen to the wisdom of an elder like my mother, and respond with creativity. In my own experience, the mere re-orientation from one moment to the next, from unconscious, business as usual behavior to creative expression, is profoundly life supporting.
In light of the radical shifts in our climate and the rise of tyranny, our creativity maybe the key to our survival. My mother has taught me that creativity is truly alchemy. It does not have to be “art” . It is the shift within one’s mind from anxiety to contemplation, from fear to activism, from hunger to stone soup. My mother and her mother know this in their bones, and I am beginning to feel it in mine.