Sandy Cove

12x16 oil

This morning I bolted awake at 4:45, thinking, I have to get my passion back; this pandemic is killing it!

I’d been feeling that something was off, and had been for weeks. But I wasn’t clear on what that something was. I just knew that I’d been feeling draggy and uninspired. This morning’s jolt wasn’t just another monkey thought. To me, it was the Universe tapping its knuckles on my skull, annoyed and trying to get through to me. “Listen up, son,” it said, grabbing my lapels. “Passion is a fundamental imperative for meaningful creativity! Get with the program.”

Indeed. I’d lost it and I knew it.

One day many years ago, I’d just finished speaking to a large group of middle school students about Under the Blood-Red Sun, my most popular novel. School visits were fun for me, and they were almost always uplifting. I’d found this age group to be bright, polite, and interested, but usually a bit hesitant to fully engage.

On my way out of the school, my librarian guide asked if I would mind stopping by the elementary school next door. There was a third grade teacher there who loved my books and wanted her class to meet a real live author. “Sure,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

The teacher, my guide told me, was one of those can-do types you wish your own kids could stick with all the way through high school, positive, cheerful, engaging and committed to the core.

The low mumble of a busy classroom went dead silent as we walked in. Thirty faces turned to gape at me, all eyes wide as dinner plates. A real live author!

I smiled and thought, Well this is different.

The bubbly teacher said, “Come in, come in, welcome! Class, this is the author we’ve been talking about.” She raised her hand and made a circling motion with her finger, a signal that called her herd of third-graders to the big rug placed at the foot of her her old-fashioned rocking chair, which I assumed was where she sat and read to her students.

Instantly, thirty third graders exploded into action and packed themselves onto that rug, wiggling close and settling in like M&Ms poured into a glass jar. The ever-smiling teacher motioned for me to make myself comfortable in the rocker, the chair of honor. I squeezed in and sat facing a wide-eyed mass of third-graders for the first time in my life.

The teacher asked if I’d like one of the cookies the class had just cooked up that morning. “Uh … sure,” I said, though I couldn’t smell any cookie smell, and there wasn’t an oven anywhere in sight.

As the teacher reached back for the cookie, that mass of third-graders inched and nudged themselves closer and closer, until those in the front row were practically sitting on my shoes. I smiled at them, wondering what in the world I could possibly say that would interest them.

They stared back at me. There was something … something in their eyes … something funny … something rascally.

“Here,” the teacher said, holding out a plate. There was a cookie on it. One cookie. At that moment I could hear the tick of the wall clock, it was so silent in that room. As one, the mass of third graders leaned closer. I wondered if they were even breathing. I’d never experienced such complete engagement, such anticipation.

I reached for the cookie, and when I touched it their whole conspiratorial scheme came into focus. Inside, I chuckled and came up with a scheme of my own. I picked up the fake rubber cookie.

All thirty mouths hung open, waiting, waiting. I looked at the cookie, then took a bite, and boy did I play it up, gagging and coughing and choking and acting as if I’d just bitten into a jalapeño pepper, all to their staggering delight. The whole mass of them cracked up, kids rolling around in tears, congratulating themselves for pulling off their biggest joke of the year.

I stayed in that classroom for thirty minutes having more fun than I’d had in years. When I walked out the door my face hurt from smiling so much, I mean it literally ached. “That!” I said to my guide. “That is where I want to be!”

On that day my writing path took a turn. Within a year I’d conceived, written and published Trouble Magnet, the first book in my Calvin Coconut series. If I wanted to get back in front of kids this age I had to write for them.

That exhilarating rush I’d experienced with those third graders was passion, quintessential passion. I just flat-out loved those kids, and I loved the time we had together.

That is what I need to get back.

It’s not the pandemic, of course, though there may be some of that in the mix. But more, it’s me allowing myself to drift. That stops right now.

I’d hang out and chat some more, but I can’t. I’m sorry, really I am, but I have a big old fat rubber cookie to find. Wish me luck!