SLUMP
(for Writing Mamas blogsite)

My son’s been drawing racecars lately. Really good ones. Of course they’re of the animated Pixar car, Lightning McQueen, but he’s six and they’re 3-D, and except that I’ve never seen the number “95” drawn accurately on the door – it’s usually “65” or “92” – they’re pretty impressive. He’s got the spatial stuff down, as well as the colors and character personality.

But yesterday he was in some sort of slump. I watched him rip page after page from his notebook and throw them to the floor with just a single line or curve on each tossed page.

“I can’t do it!” he screamed – and this from a kid who doesn’t usually lose his cool. He’s the kid on the playground saying, “Excuse me, guys? Excuse me? Could you please stop yelling at each other? Let’s just try to figure this out, okay?”

But in this moment of frustration he’s irrational. He’s lost his cool because he’s lost his ability to do something he knows he’s capable of doing. I try to explain that it’s temporary, that he’ll figure it out again, that maybe he just needs a break or a snack.

Truth be told, though, I’m a little nervous for him. Deep down, I’m right there with him.

I think of all the half-written essays in my journal, and the essays I attempt that look nothing on the page like they do in my head, and the rejection letters I’ve received for the ones I’ve completed. I get scared that, like me, he might wonder if he’ll ever “arrive.”

To have the desire and the ambition, but to feel like you no longer have the knack, or, worse yet, that you never did, is terrifying.

But I keep these thoughts to myself, give my boy a hug, and stick to my solution that he take a break, have a snack, and try again later.

Imagine, then, the triumph I feel the next morning when he has powered out two fully-sketched, fully-colored Lightning McQueens before I even have the chance to put peanut butter on his toast.