Sometimes you just have to sit back, shut your mouth and let a kid do her thing

Giggles had a music project for school a couple of weeks ago and the instructions were pretty straightforward – make a musical instrument, an interpretation of an existing one or create a new one, write about your instrument and how you made it, be creative and imaginative in your design. Those last few words are shining beacons to my artistic daughter’s soul.

I started to get a little nervous when she began collecting the empty gallon milk jugs, the empty liter soda bottles and numerous smaller water bottles and hoarding them in a corner of the kitchen. When I questioned her about this stack of recyclables, she told me about her design and showed me the sketches she had done. I was skeptical of her chosen path, I admit. The scale of the project, the amount of labor involved and knowing my daughter’s time management skills, made me think she had bitten off way more than she could chew in the time available. I asked some questions, made some gentle suggestions on altering her design and expectation and was met with a solid wall of obstinate. So be it, I thought, let her manage this.

As she continued to gather supplies and the hand-in date grew closer, the only development I could see was the growing pile of recyclables. No building of required project. I asked a few more questions, met the same obstinate stance and decided to just remind her of the date and back away slowly. She is her mother’s daughter after all and like recognizes like. Time to back off. But I doubted, oh! did I doubt. You would doubt too if you asked yourself the following question: what musical instrument can a 12 year old girl create with a pile of bottles and a roll of duct tape?

The beginning phases of this project looked something akin to a battered science fiction space ship that got spanked a recent battle, limped through hyperspace to survive another day but may never make it back to the home planet. I swear. Plastic bottles duct taped together and on and around each other to form a shape vaguely resembling a giant sausage with a broken carriage wheel on one end. If only I had taken pictures, but my concern was so huge that this was going to be such a flop that I didn’t want any lingering reminders in the future.

Doubt spread further when she took it to a friend’s house and the girls’ father asked me why my daughter was raiding his recycling can and asked me what her project was supposed to be. I just told him she had a vision and we felt it important to let her express herself. Because, frankly, I agreed with him. Completely oblivious to the lack of adult confidence in this project, Giggles was thrilled with some of the craft material she snagged from her friends craft bin and the supply of materials she foraged from her grandfather’s basement.

The weekend before the due-date - of course it was the weekend before, when else does a 12 year old finish a project, I ask you? – she hauled ass finishing this thing, taping and stapling, cutting and covering, gluing and painting. A quick trip to the dollar store to convince the manager to sell us the broken wind-chimes laying on the floor for half price rounded out the materials she needed to complete the vision that had been stewing in her head for weeks.

Her Music of Nature Tree.

She made a 3 ½ foot tall tree out of plastic bottles, duct tape, cardboard and found items from friends and family that made different sounds when the dangling wind chimes were hit with a variety of materials. Sometimes if the movement was right the wind chimes would make their own music as they clanked against each other. She made a musical tree, mostly out of recycled materials. It was so cool, and so funky in design, I kept expecting to see the checkle patch at the base of it. (Extra points to anyone who knows what I hell I was just talking about let alone has fond memories of The Magic Garden)

It was too big for her to carry to school on the bus so I drove her in that morning. The pride on her face, as she carried this magical musical tree, that was almost as tall as she is, through the hallways of her school, was such a beautiful wonder to behold it brought tears to my eyes, because she had had this vision from the very first day, stuck to it and did not let anyone convince her to scale it back, or to change her mind. We tried to stifle the effort of this vision and it would have been the worst parenting ever had we succeeded. As teachers and students oohed and aaahed at her project as we passed, the beaming glow she wore kept getting brighter and brighter. One older student yelled out “A PLUS FOR SURE!!” as she hauled it down the hall. Teachers poked their heads out of classrooms to see what was gathering so much attention and shared their amazement. I think she floated on clouds the rest of the day.

When she got home from school, her pride in herself as she told us that her teacher said that in all her years of teaching, no one had ever handed in such a creative project, a sense of accomplishment that had been filling her up all day, practically spilled over. And she deserved that pride, I told her later that night, because she held fast to her vision, never letting anyone convince her it was too much, never letting the doubt sway her. She deserves whatever praise and self-satisfaction she receives for this project because she made it her own. I admire the dedication to the vision she had, the ability to let the nay saying wash over her head and keep moving forward.

My kid is pretty damn amazing. If I do say so myself.