stay golden. you and me and charlie are artists.

(picture shown to me by eric cottrell and i cant remember who photographed it, but hes good dont you think?)

“every child is an artist. the problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”--pablo picasso

sometimes i have small panic attacks that i am becoming an adult and that somewhere the artist inside of me or the creator or the free bird with wings that is ready to sing is slowly being silenced, being covered by health insurance and church callings and the mundanity of everyday life. breathe shannon i say. calm down. i see kids all day but sometimes i wonder if the one inside of me is gone, if the the details and bills and paperwork are somehow slowly chiseling away the creativesoul inside and that all of the things that made me shannon elizabeth mehner as a child have become subject to the difficulty of just keeping my head afloat in this great big grown up ocean. this grown up business is tricky.

as a child, teenager, and well into my college years functioning as a normal person was not my strong suit. matching clothes and clean rooms, even remembering to turn off the lights, was not a part of the calendar year. one time i was cooking macaroni and cheese but i was reading this beautiful book and i knew it was burning (the macaroni and cheese, not the book), i could smell it and hear it and a part of my brain knew, but i just kept on reading until whitney's pan was scorched to the core. sorry whitney, i never bought you a new pan. see, im so bad at this stuff.

that book was a dream though.

but deadlines and paperwork and all of those details, man, not my thing. i liked books and poetry and art and imagination. i liked to create, and be in awe of creation. one time during college i hopped in the car with lucky (the very embodiment of a bluebird, marching to the beat of the craziest drum ive ever heard) in our onesie pajamas and drove to montana and listened to john lennon and danced by the side of the road next to a ram on a mountain and ate so many animal crackers i almost died and told stories about truck drivers, intricate, detailed stories about imaginary truckdrivers and their lives on the road. we arrived at my sisters house at 3 am and left the next day at 7 pm. in all grownup standards, it was ridiculous. but boy we danced next to those montana mountains in that brilliant sun. and i felt alive.

during my sophomore year of college i painted one shoe bright pink and one shoe bright green and i wore them to school everyday. i loved neon. neon was life. at the time i thought my dad was going to get an ulcer from how ridiculous i looked and i did look ridiculous. but it just felt good you know, to wear neon. to wear what i wanted. i felt like me in those shoes. i liked how that felt.

nick and i talk a lot about how life is a balance. boy do i know it. i am trying to learn balance. sometimes its just so boring though! i work fulltime, i wear normal, boring, professional clothes, i try to be productive. gone are the days of cutting out snowflakes in the attic until 2 am and then pasting them on the ceiling. gone are the days of writing millions of random thoughts on very small pieces of paper, and dispersing them in random places on campus for random people to find while they are going on with their everyday lives. i go to bed at a decent hour. i have a routine.

its not all bad. some of it is very good. i am much better at functioning in life now. there are no loaves of bread under my bed molding, unlike high school. i have not burned anything in a while. i take care of adult things that i never thought i would be able to take care of. but sometimes i miss wearing neon shoes and writing down my thoughts in a secret journal and reading poetry in the middle of the day on a bench and crying because it made me feel so incredibly alive. i love to feel alive! sometimes i miss hiding in the closet so i wouldnt have to clean the bathroom and reading bridge to terabithia for the 600th time and marveling at the fact that it just gets better everytime you read it. sometimes i miss being golden, and i worry that all the golden parts inside of me are rotting.

i dont think all grownups lose the child inside. i hope not. i think it is always there if we look for it. being a grown up is inveitable. progression is important. this i know and believe most of the time. im glad that i am better at paying bills. but i hope that no matter how deep i wade into the ocean of adulthood, i still keep a foot in the kiddie pool. i hope i still make irrational decisions and believe that imagination is the most important thing in the entire world and read poetry sometimes in the middle of the day even though the kitchen is a disaster. i hope my bluebird never goes into too deep of a sleep because im so focused on getting everything done that i forget how beautiful just living and breathing and being can be. i hope sometimes i still wear neon. i hope i always dance like no one is watching, and i dance often. i hope i never worry too much about what other grownups think.

i hope too, that i always find time to create, and to appreciate creation in all of its forms. picasso is right when he says every child is an artist. smart man that picasso. maybe not every child is a painter or a writer or a reader or a muralist, but every child appreciates spiderwebs and leaves and snowfall. every child creates worlds and stories and imagines they are batman or babe ruth or a butterfly or a princess. every child can make a toy out of yarn or a paperclip or even their own hand. im always amazed at recess that the kids are never cold, but they dont even notice the frosty weather. they are busy creating.

i know grownup world comes with responsibilities and worries and real life things to address. but i hope you still let that child out sometimes, okay? is that okay? i hope you still think spiderwebs are a wonder, and try to create something everyday because the world is too big and bright not to, and you are an artist. worlds, paintings, good vibrations, a toy out of yarn, whatever you want. i think you should sit back and soak in the world sometimes too. i was babysitting yesterday and we sat on a bench, charlie, jillian and i, and we watched two men cut down an enormous oak tree and it was beautiful being there in the sun watching this enormous tree come down branch by branch, so big and sad a little that its life was over and done, and i sat back and watched and charlie and i talked about how tough tree cutters are and i felt glad to be there. content. when we were coming home four-year-old charlie turned to me with big eyes and a golden soul and said in all earnestness, "life is awesome." i agree. and i hope that no matter how busy i get or how many worries life brings or how easy it is to let all of the golden inside rot, i always see it the way charlie does.