The Inheritance 1/22/2023

By: Jennifer Richardson Holt

I seem to have passed an unexpected trait down to my daughter. It is one of those things that could be both a blessing and a curse. I know it certainly has been for me.  Right now, it is leaning every so slightly to the latter, proving a challenge to her schoolwork. It did the same for me. I think the way this has manifested in her though might be more developed. I mean if this characteristic was a soft yeast roll in me, for her we’re talking more a perfectly flaky and layered pastry fit for croissants to be served to aristocrats. I am not entirely certain that analogy translated as well as I wanted it to, but I am hoping that you it made enough sense for you to grasp the idea I was aiming to present.  The attribute of which I speak is imagination. Not in the traditional “ability to play creatively or tell a good story” type of way, but in the “my brain is doing so much right now telling its own tales and traveling its own roads that it is an outright battle to get it to focus on whatever the task at hand may be” sense of the word.  Maybe some of you are in the same boat with my daughter and myself.  If so, you know that it is quite the roller coaster ride. One that you will also know isn’t always particularly willing to let you off.

When I say her imaginative exploits are a higher caliber, I feel I should elaborate by explaining my own version first. When I was a child, I had the same problem of daydreaming and not getting schoolwork done. I very clearly remember not finishing an endless number of assignments when I was in first grade. I don’t remember the problem continuing to that level much further in school so I am hoping I grew out of it, (or at least adapted it enough to manage), and she will as well. But when my daughter daydreams it is not how I did it. I know my methodology all too well since I still do it. I have just learned how to somehow get by and get things done (for the most part) despite it.  I can easily stare off into space for a disconcerting amount of time.  Those people who say they would go crazy if put in a blank white walled room confuse me.  I don’t need anything to look at really. My brain will happily meander to anything and anywhere really without any prompting. I don’t even really require distractions because my brain is so eager to wander off without me regardless of outside stimuli.

Now, while I don’t require distraction, oh my days, my uncanny ability to find distraction is amazing. I feel like if I could harness that skill somehow for the good, I could very possibly rule the world.  Before I finished the previous paragraph in fact, suddenly before I knew what I was doing, I was overwhelmed by the urge to pick up my phone and play a word game. What in the world? Where did that come from?  My brain knew it had a task and therefore immediately felt compelled to travel all other available roads.  I loathe this about me. While not requiring something to distract me is sometimes helpful since it means I can use my imagination to come up with ideas and concepts even without specific source material, the fact that I take any teeny tiny thing and could lose all brain function to it until I literally must wrestle myself back to focus is tedious to say the least.

My daughter shares both sides of the imagination that I do but hers are just so much more refined. She can stare off and create a new world and she can see some tiny something and do the same but while I might make an obvious flight of fancy hers will be creative to the point that the mind boggles at what it can build. It’s like someone finds a grain of sand and builds from it a palace with moat, drawbridge, resident royal family, their empire over which they reign as well as centuries of their history.  You probably think I am exaggerating here but I assure you that I do not.  When she plays pretend, she may be a fairy princess but there is also a queen and ally. She will also have the appropriate setting. This setting will have mythological creatures each with its own specific supernatural traits.  The environment will have unique colors and the population will have certain foods that they eat.  There will be wars of good versus evil, but they will not be black and white battles as characters will be complex. There may be a villain, but she has a good side and wants to not be bad, but she was wronged in the past and is lashing out in dealing with her wounds. This is an actual storyline my daughter has used. All these details are sorted out.  If she grows out of her disdain for writing (you know, spelling and parts of speech and such) she’ll produce an infinitely better novel than I could ever imagine. I could possibly come up with a decent story. She would come up with an epic saga.

So, this is the magic (that is also complex like her characters now that I think about it) that I am up against. This is what makes her sometimes not get her work done in class. This is also what makes her able to conceive absolute masterpieces. I have tried to tell her I struggle with the same inability to focus due to overactivity of my mind in what is probably a sad attempt at empathy and relatability but considering it is in fact still a struggle I don’t know how much help or encouragement I can truly be.  She will just have to learn how to take a stand against those flights. There will be times that, for the sake of accomplishing what she is tasked to get done, she will have to choose between a fairy who seems evil but is only trying to trick the townspeople so they will reveal where they have hidden the treasure that was stolen from her, or spelling words. And, sometimes, the war of choosing will be harder fought than others.  At least she came by it honestly.