“What did my five-year-old self love?”
I put this question together from prompts in the journaling app I use and from creators like Cait Flanders and Jessica Rose Williams, who reflect on their younger selves as well as their imagined future selves. Cait Flanders talks about thinking of “Old Lady Cait,” and I like to try to do the same. That might be another post! But for now, I’ll give you the child version of me and a set of two memories of things I loved. I’ve forgotten and remembered these time and time again, but I’m glad I’m remembering more than forgetting, now.
The first memory was being art class. I remember sitting next to a window, painting in relative quiet (these were first graders, so you can only expect so much) as the afternoon sun spilled onto my paper through a window to my right. In the memory, I’m painting one of Monet’s famous bridge and lily pad scenes with water color.
Outside of art class, the rest of the day could often be loud and overstimulating (I have a particularly grating memory of children being told to scream in response during gym class every time our teachers yelled, “EXERCISE.”) But, alas, teachers at that time didn’t really know what sensory processing disorder was, and so, I just knew I got to look forward to art class. The quiet and predictability of paint on paper and trying to make something beautiful.
In the second set of memories, I’m working one on one with a teacher to develop a story about Claude Monet’s life. I think I was given some freedom to pick a topic for this project, and given how much I loved painting bridges and water lilies, I thought I might want to learn more about Monet. With her help, I print out sections of text from our early generation Macintosh computer lab machines, which looked something like this:
I cut out these sections of text along with pictures of Monet and his paintings. I glued the images to neon pink cardstock. The teacher then laminated and bound it with staples. And now, I suspect, it’s somewhere in my parents’ basement. Forgotten, but not really.
I don’t remember the details of Monet’s life. Just the joy of having gotten to choose a project, learning about something new, and creating something I cared about.
I started thinking back on this memory a few years ago, when, at 23, I walked through room after room of Monet’s lilies at the Art Institute of Chicago. I brought a friend there a few years later. I think both times I cried. I love a lot of art I didn’t get to try to imitate in first grade, but I think I connected with those lilies in a different way having painted them almost twenty years before.
Here’s a picture from one of those Art Institute trips. Blurry fingertip and all, it’s still something:
Monthly Calm Catalogue: What’s has brought be calm recently?
- Morning routine flexibility. I used to write in my journal every single morning. But I’ve let up on doing this consistently to make room for other habits like meditation, breathwork, and sleeping in.
- Laughing at my anxiety and obsessive tendencies. I’m working to be able to better watch and recognize my anxiety in the moment, and while I’m not quite there yet, I think I’ve gotten better at laughing at what seem like totally absurd meltdowns after the fact. The feelings are real and valid, and I never invalidate my feelings by laughing a them, but I’ve found it to be healing to laugh once the worst of it has passed. Hoping to write some standup material on my mood disorder, one day, perhaps.
- Evening meditation with records. My husband and I were gifted a record player, and in an effort to make sure it was set up correctly while he was gone the other night, I put on an album (Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN.) and sat on my meditation cushion to listen and watch the sunset over the city.
The Lazy PhD 
