I’m the kind of person who…

Posted by: Ondine Brooks Kuraoka on: January 5, 2010

• In: writing
• 4 Comments

My younger son, Leo, 7, surprised me the other day when he said, “I’m the kind of person who usually gets a scrape on his knees. Every time I go out to play I know it’s going to happen.” I asked him, “But how many times has it not happened? Maybe it just seems that way because you’re an active kid and you like to run around.”

Then he surprised me again by saying, “But it doesn’t bother me- it’s just something that happens and I just keep playing.”

I’d made the assumption that he needed emotional rescuing- that he was labeling himself in a negative way by saying he’s the always-scraping-his-knees kind of kid. But what he was telling me was that scrapes are par for the course and don’t stop him from doing what he wants to do.

Once again, I’d learned my lesson of the day from someone 34 years younger than me. As it is with knees, so it is with writing.

The other thing I’m beginning to accept is “I’m the kind of person who enjoys not writing just as much as writing.” Does that make me a freak in Writer World? I thoroughly enjoyed my holidays this year, making giant God’s eyes from myriad gorgeous yarns, cooking both Japanese and German New Year’s feasts with my husband, sons, mother, aunt and mother-in-law, taking glorious morning walks with our dog, and sledding down snowy hills again and again.  My evenings were always capped with cozy bedtime reading, one of my greatest pleasures and as essential as food and water. I spent my daylight hours fully immersed in the physical world, and how I love it there.

I admit, I did not put pen to paper or finger to keyboard even once. And I feel great! And ready to write. Onward!

Ondine Brooks Kuraoka