Kelly Corrigan, MARIANNE THE MAKER
[0:00]Hi, I'm Zippy Owens.
[0:03]Welcome to Totally Butte,
[0:05]where I get to talk to my favorite authors
[0:08]and hopefully make them yours as well.
[0:11]Today, I am so excited to have Kelly Corrigan
[0:14]back on my show this time to talk about
[0:18]Marianne the Maker written by Kelly and her daughter,
[0:22]Claire Corrigan-Lick-D.
[0:24]Just so exciting, and here's a little bit about Kelly.
[0:28]Kelly Corrigan has been called the voice of her generation
[0:31]by O with the Oprah magazine and the poet
[0:34]Laureate of the Ordinary by the Huffington Post.
[0:37]She is the author of The New York Times Best Sellers,
[0:40]Tell Me More, The Middle Place,
[0:42]Lift and Glittering Glue.
[0:44]Between books, she hosts a podcast, Kelly Corrigan wonders,
[0:48]featuring intimate conversations with high IQ slash EQ types
[0:53]about well-being, purpose, and impact.
[0:56]Marianne the Maker, a collaboration with Kelly's daughter,
[0:59]Claire, it's her second book for children.
[1:01]Kelly managed to write Hello World all by herself.
[1:05]Welcome, Kelly.
[1:06]Thank you.
[1:07]So great to be here.
[1:11]Oops.
[1:11]OK, Marianne the Maker, tell everyone all about it.
[1:15]So Claire and I had this burgeoning conviction
[1:20]that there is a great need to return to creative work
[1:26]in a more regular way, in a real low stakes way,
[1:29]and that we have over scheduled both our children
[1:32]and ourselves at Great Parallel.
[1:34]And so while it is a really fun kids' book
[1:37]about this girl who is sick of being sent to soccer practice,
[1:42]a sport her dad loved, and really just
[1:46]wants to stay home and work on her invention, which
[1:48]is this flying machine that she calls a Moodle Boot,
[1:52]with her dog, whose name is Patrick Swayze,
[1:54]because she's a kid who loved the 80s inexplicably.
[1:59]What's underneath it for us is this belief
[2:02]that we have abandoned this part of our nature
[2:05]and that it's causing problems.
[2:07]So I sort of think of making and creativity
[2:10]as one solution to two huge problems,
[2:13]one is mental health plummeting,
[2:16]and two is the lack of societal progress.
[2:20]And I think that that Maker Mindset is
[2:22]the answer is an answer to both problems.
[2:27]So if you look at the research and the data,
[2:30]which I bet you didn't think we were going to talk about today,
[2:32]let's go there.
[2:32]But if you look at it in a book like Your Brain on Art,
[2:36]have you read that?
[2:37]No?
[2:37]OK, so it's two women who wrote it.
[2:39]Susan Maxman is a neuroscientist at Hopkins, Ivy Ross,
[2:42]who runs a design group at Google.
[2:44]And the two of them got together, and they
[2:46]pulled together all the research about neuro aesthetics.
[2:48]But what happens to us when we are creating or making?
[2:52]And it sounds pretty good.
[2:54]I mean, it's more dope, I mean, more serotonin
[2:57]and lower cortisol.
[2:58]And part of it is it's like an engaged leisure
[3:03]versus a sedentary leisure.
[3:05]And so that was this idea that maybe we had decided
[3:10]that creativity and making was a luxury
[3:13]for time-rich people who wanted to express themselves,
[3:16]rather than this essential part of us
[3:18]that must be catered to, in the way
[3:21]that probably when you and I were growing up,
[3:23]in our school curriculum, there was orchestra, choir,
[3:27]homework, shop class.
[3:29]And there was an understanding that a really deeply satisfying
[3:34]and gratifying kind of activity is both mental and manual.
[3:38]But then it got pulled apart.
[3:40]And there were the blue collar people and the white collar
[3:43]people.
[3:43]And everything got broken down into these tiny increments,
[3:47]such that everyone was, I mean, it's sort of like assembly
[3:50]line thinking where it's like, just do this screw all day long.
[3:53]But before people lived like that,
[3:55]they made things all the time.
[3:57]They made gardens full of food that then turned into these meals
[4:01]that people came and loved and talked about.
[4:03]They made all kinds of machines from start to finish,
[4:07]rather than just this tiny sliver of the process
[4:09]that doesn't give you a sense of the whole.
[4:11]And so I think it is actually reading Ivy and Susan,
[4:16]reading a guy named Matthew Crawford
[4:17]who wrote a book called shop class, a soul craft,
[4:20]which I found totally persuasive.
[4:22]And then reading this book called rest
[4:24]about the difference between engaged leisure and sedentary leisure.
[4:28]Sort of all three of those books kind of wove together
[4:30]in my mind to make me feel like this was a little bit more
[4:34]than just a really great story about this funny kid
[4:36]that's sort of irresistible.
[4:38]But rather, it's a way to get into the middle
[4:42]of the most tender moments that parents and children have.
[4:46]Like to be in that, to be in a chair, an overstep chair
[4:50]with a parent and a child while they're reading a book
[4:52]and to be able to float a couple ideas in there
[4:55]and see if you can get them thinking about them
[4:57]and talking about them together,
[4:58]that all of a sudden seemed like a very powerful way
[5:02]to participate in what started to feel very important to me.
[5:05]That's amazing.
[5:06]You can add one more book to your list of evidence
[5:10]and everything, but Martha Beck's Beyond Anxiety.
[5:13]She talks about creativity as something that happens
[5:17]in one part of your brain that literally shuts off anxiety
[5:20]in the other.
[5:21]You cannot be creating and also be anxious at that moment.
[5:25]Yes. Well, the interesting thing about that is Claire,
[5:28]my daughter who wrote it with me,
[5:29]who is a double major in computer science and drama.
[5:32]She's the only one at University of Virginia at this moment.
[5:35]And perhaps the world.
[5:36]And perhaps the world.
[5:37]And she's graduating in three weeks and she has the therapist
[5:42]and she loves and the therapist said a noticing brain
[5:45]has no anxiety.
[5:48]And so the point that she was making,
[5:50]which is also made by Ivy and Susan in your brain on art,
[5:53]is that you are equally served by creating
[5:59]and also beholding.
[6:01]That beholding offers the same set of physiological benefits.
[6:04]It triggers the same internal pharmacy
[6:07]that all of us carry around within us.
[6:09]It's like a little bolus that we're just dropping
[6:12]all these great neurochemicals into our cell.
[6:14]It's like a neurochemical bubble bath.
[6:16]And it happens both when you are making a go-to-cart
[6:20]or taking a part an old laptop or painting a painting
[6:23]or making up a skate with your friends.
[6:25]But it also happens when you flip out over these flowers
[6:29]or you walk up and down the west side highway
[6:32]and start really looking at all those tulips.
[6:35]Or you're even listening to a song like Claire and I
[6:37]did this drive up and down the state of California
[6:40]doing readings for what we call a pre-order tour.
[6:43]So we were talking to kids during the day
[6:46]where we would share the book with them.
[6:47]And then we would talk to their parents at night
[6:49]about the really deep need for unstructured,
[6:54]unjudged creative time in every day.
[6:58]And while we were driving a song came on by the span cake.
[7:02]I don't know if you know the band cake.
[7:03]They're phenomenal.
[7:04]Does anyone know the band cake?
[7:06]Thanks, right?
[7:07]If you know, you know.
[7:08]And so anyway, we were just kind of going bananas
[7:12]about this song.
[7:13]Like it was like this is so great the way
[7:14]this instrument comes in, but not until the third verse.
[7:17]The bridge is so clever.
[7:19]Listen to that line.
[7:20]His voice is so interesting.
[7:21]I love the background singers.
[7:22]And really going in detail on how great the song was.
[7:26]And then Claire, all of a sudden said, we're beholding.
[7:29]And it was like, yes, we are.
[7:30]And this is good for us.
[7:31]This is energizing.
[7:33]So I think that that tour really clarified my thinking
[7:37]because at the end of every talk with parents
[7:40]and many, many educators.
[7:42]And then many maker types who were drawn to it.
[7:45]We kept hearing the same story coming back at us, which
[7:49]is totally agree.
[7:50]Like I've been quilting with my friends.
[7:52]Or I'm in a four-part harmony men singing group at night.
[7:56]And it's totally changed my whole being.
[7:58]Like it is not only is it to your great benefit
[8:02]in the moment, in and of itself, without any additional benefit
[8:06]down the line.
[8:07]But it also is restorative in a way
[8:10]that allows your productivity later to flourish.
[8:14]So it's also like a little investment in your future work.
[8:18]So you just can't say a bad thing about making
[8:20]a creativity.
[8:21]Honestly, the more you dig in, the more thrilling it is.
[8:23]Do you want to write something like this for grownups?
[8:27]I know this is for the grownups who are reading it
[8:29]to their children.
[8:30]But for those who have aged out of that, have it.
[8:33]Well, it's funny that you say that because I have thought
[8:35]about, we've done a couple of,
[8:37]because I have this podcast, I have this audience.
[8:40]And so sometimes we have these zooms
[8:43]where 400 people will show up and we'll talk about something
[8:46]and we call them workshop.
[8:47]And it's like a deep dive into something that I've tried.
[8:50]And half the time, the thing I tried didn't work,
[8:52]like tried to make a movie.
[8:54]And half the time, it did work.
[8:55]Tried to write a book or create an event for Children's Hospital
[8:58]at London, something that I learned a lot from.
[9:01]And then we kind of break it down.
[9:02]Like we extract the sort of takeaways from the experience
[9:07]and how do you get all your listeners
[9:09]to do all of your brand strategy?
[9:11]Yeah.
[9:12]Is that what it is?
[9:14]They're such an active group and everybody's busy making.
[9:18]And we have this newsletter that's very active
[9:19]where they write us back and tell us what they've been working on
[9:23]and how it's changing their lives, not only their mood,
[9:27]but they're also their impact in other areas of their life.
[9:31]And so those workshop events have,
[9:35]I do always finish them and think, there's probably a book here.
[9:39]But I think it's really important to separate that so many
[9:44]kind of how to books, which I've never written
[9:46]and how to book, I mostly just write stories about family life.
[9:49]But so many how-to books are missing the point
[9:54]I'm trying to make, which is that it is in and of itself
[9:58]to your benefit.
[10:00]So, versus this is how you write a book and get on the bestseller list, or this is how you start a podcast and make it really catch on.
[10:07]And that's not at all interesting to me. First of all, it feels really like braggy and unappealing. I wouldn't want to read that.
[10:14]And also, there's just so much luck involved. I mean, you and I both know that like your book catches a little bit of win from just the right person. It catches the eye of somebody at O Magazine or whatever.
[10:25]And the next thing you know, you get pulled into a little bit of fun. But it could just as easily have missed.
[10:33]You could have just as easily have been one of the many great books that never got noticed.
[10:38]And so I would hate to point the rules of this.
[10:42]Just say, hey, you go.
[10:45]It's funny when people, at the end of readings, people often say like, I'm trying to write a book and do you have any advice?
[10:51]And I feel like I'm constantly trying to remind people that there's just a lot of luck involved.
[10:59]Because it's really hard to believe when it doesn't work that well, when the book doesn't really catch on.
[11:04]It's really hard to believe that it's not your fault and it doesn't mean that the book's not good.
[11:11]But that is often the truth. I mean, we know that. We know that intellectually because many great books that are now in the canon were ignored in the writer's lifetime.
[11:20]So it is often the case that something gets lost and then something gets found later.
[11:27]And vice versa. I mean, there's plenty of books on the bestseller list that I think are crap.
[11:32]We're not going to name them though.
[11:34]We are not.
[11:36]But you all know them. You all know.
[11:38]And you're in the bookstore and you're like, wow, New York Times bestseller.
[11:41]And then you start reading and you're like, huh, I could have written this.
[11:46]That's honestly the way I started taking myself seriously as somebody who might be able to get published to be totally honest between us.
[11:54]Although I guess it's not really between us because there's like nine cameras pointed at me.
[11:58]But the time that I was working, so my father and I both had cancer at the same time.
[12:03]And I really loved my dad. And he's quite a character.
[12:08]And so I started working on this thing because I thought I'm going to write down what it has been to be his kid.
[12:14]And I'm going to give it to him before he dies. And that is motivation enough.
[12:17]And it was right around the time that self publishing was a thing.
[12:20]So I knew that I could have it produced into a book like form and I could actually hand it to him.
[12:25]And it's the visual of handing him this thing and saying, this is what it feels like to be your kid.
[12:30]Was enough to keep me moving.
[12:32]And then there was a book on the New York Times bestseller list right there, right around the top.
[12:38]And I read the book and I thought, I don't think this is that good.
[12:43]And so if this is like working for people, maybe I can play in the Serena.
[12:48]Like maybe I could throw my hat in here because this doesn't seem that special to me.
[12:54]This doesn't seem, you know, I have a master's in English literature.
[12:57]So what I was reading was Dickens and Marilyn Robinson.
[13:02]And I cannot write that and I know it.
[13:06]And so to me that was a book.
[13:08]And then to read something that's just popular that's not that totally untouchable level.
[13:16]Then it was like, oh, there's space.
[13:18]There's like all kinds of books.
[13:20]There's just room on that list, you know.
[13:22]And especially on the nonfiction side, it's kind of an interesting list to be on because it's often mostly men.
[13:28]And men who have achieved something great in some other area.
[13:32]And it's probably been ghost written for them.
[13:34]Like when I was on the best side of the list, it was like, I think Lee Iacoka was on the list and Tony Dungi, who was an NFL coach.
[13:41]And an Olympic athlete was on there.
[13:44]And there's really like one slot, typically, for a book about a totally normal person having an unusual experience that's actually a well told story.
[13:55]And it's like, that's the slot you're aiming for because the world doesn't want two of those at a time.
[14:00]They just want one at a time.
[14:01]So it was like, glass castle had it for a while.
[14:04]You'd pray love had it for a while.
[14:06]Middle place this book I'm describing had it for a minute.
[14:08]And then it moves on to the next person and the next person.
[14:11]But it's a tiny little hole that you're trying to get through.
[14:17]And if you ever get through it, it's just dumb luck.
[14:19]That's very encouraging.
[14:20]Thank you for that.
[14:21]Yeah.
[14:23]So Scott now is really what I would say.
[14:24]Just like slimming down their laptop.
[14:26]Sorry, I'm sorry.
[14:28]No, but you should write it for you because back to Mary Ann, the maker, like storytelling is curative unto itself.
[14:35]Like it will leave you better than it found you.
[14:37]So you probably don't remember this.
[14:39]But when I interviewed you in person, like five, six years ago, something like that,
[14:43]we were talking about something I think related to your dad passing away or something.
[14:49]And I said, oh, you should write about.
[14:51]You should write a book about blah, blah, blah.
[14:52]And you were like, oh, I don't think I could deal with having to talk about it so much.
[14:56]And I was like, no, no, but you just have to write the book.
[14:59]You said write the book.
[15:00]And you were like, no, I can't.
[15:02]I don't deal with that.
[15:04]And I think about that so much.
[15:06]And I'm sure you have no idea what I'm talking about.
[15:08]Because I didn't realize then that you couldn't just put out a book
[15:12]without having to have the same conversation around it a thousand times.
[15:16]Yes.
[15:17]And you knew that.
[15:18]And you were like, I can't handle having this conversation a thousand times.
[15:21]So I am not even going to produce it.
[15:23]Yeah.
[15:24]It's interesting, a lot of people, because that first book was about having cancer
[15:29]and then my dad having cancer, many people come up to me and they have something
[15:35]similarly harrowing that they think might make a good memoir.
[15:39]And it might.
[15:40]But what I often say to them is, do you want to talk about this for five years?
[15:44]Because if it works, if it connects, you will definitely be talking about it,
[15:49]all the way leading up to publication of the hardcover,
[15:52]all the way through the hardcover run, then it will come out in paperback
[15:55]and you'll do a whole another run.
[15:57]And if you get traction, I mean, I still get through my speaker's bureau requests
[16:03]to come and go to Indianapolis to give a speech in front of a thousand people
[16:08]in a hospital system about cancer.
[16:11]That book came out in 2008.
[16:13]So I love talking about my dad and I love talking about love,
[16:16]which is really what the mental place is about.
[16:19]So it was perfectly fine with me.
[16:21]When I was thinking about writing, I have written, honestly,
[16:25]an entire 242-page book about the last 21 days of my dad's life.
[16:30]And I couldn't imagine touring with it or going on podcast,
[16:36]going on podcast to talk about it.
[16:38]It just made me cry every time.
[16:40]And I thought I just don't want to sob all over people in every bookstore in America.
[16:47]And I don't want to stop crying either.
[16:50]I don't want to get so good at talking about this that I don't even feel it anymore.
[16:55]Like, sometimes it feels like with grief, like the crying part is all you've got.
[17:00]And you just wouldn't want to not have access to those very tender emotions
[17:05]because then you're kind of over it.
[17:07]And I don't necessarily want to be.
[17:09]Oh, okay.
[17:11]See?
[17:15]It's not a good idea, you guys.
[17:17]When you get emotional even now and you're thinking about your dad,
[17:23]is there something that triggers it for you that you think about a memory or is just that you miss him so much?
[17:29]You know, it's funny.
[17:31]My husband who is not nearly as emotional as I am.
[17:35]I mean, we sometimes joke that he's dead inside.
[17:38]I'm sure he loves that.
[17:41]Yeah.
[17:42]He doesn't care because he's dead inside.
[17:44]And he doesn't care.
[17:45]Okay.
[17:46]So anyway, but he cried a lot when my dad died.
[17:51]And it was incredibly helpful to me.
[17:55]And we were sitting on the deck one time and he was super emotional.
[17:59]He was a little thrall puffy.
[18:00]And you know, he couldn't tell.
[18:02]He's like, I can't talk.
[18:03]And I said, what is it?
[18:05]And he said, it's not even sadness.
[18:07]It's just the love.
[18:08]It's like I just feel so lucky to have been loved by him.
[18:11]I mean, that's pretty good.
[18:14]That's pretty good.
[18:15]So it's a, you know, it was an exquisite emotional experience
[18:22]to be in relationship with him.
[18:24]And that's what I miss.
[18:26]I miss like the thrill of seeing him.
[18:29]And I was just thinking about him because he worked at
[18:31]57th and 8th Avenue in the Hearst Building,
[18:33]the building that has all the crisscrosses.
[18:36]And it was such a fun experience for us.
[18:39]And it totally informed my life choices
[18:41]because he worked from 59 years old to 69 years old
[18:46]from Villanova, Pennsylvania.
[18:49]Take the train to 30th Street in downtown Philadelphia.
[18:52]Take the train to Penn Station and then get on a subway
[18:55]and get yourself to 57th and 8th Avenue from 59 to 69.
[19:00]So I'm 57.
[19:01]I'm often like when do I retire?
[19:04]Because I just don't have the energy that I used to have.
[19:07]You know, this is it for me today.
[19:09]This is this is my one 30 minute like burst of energy.
[19:13]And then I'm over for today's in the books.
[19:16]And this guy was doing these huge monster days
[19:21]and I would come up and come to New York
[19:23]with him.
[19:24]It's how I got to know New York.
[19:25]I had never lived here until recently.
[19:28]And so we would, he would leave and go to work.
[19:31]And I would run around the city.
[19:33]And then we would meet for lunch.
[19:34]We'd have a glass of wine and a creme brulee
[19:36]and a cappuccina like on the expense account.
[19:39]Sorry, Hurst.
[19:40]And then he would kind of sweep through the office
[19:44]and say hi to whoever he needed to say hi to.
[19:46]And like meet me at a back door around 330
[19:48]and we'd get on the early train home.
[19:50]And on the way home, I'd be like this.
[19:53]And then he'd say, lovey.
[19:55]What do you think?
[19:56]Should we hop out and play in tennis?
[19:57]And I was like, you could play tennis right now.
[19:59]Yeah.
[20:00]Like, that's incredible.
[20:01]Like, where are you getting this energy?
[20:03]And so when our youngest, Claire, graduated,
[20:07]we were out in California.
[20:08]And we'd been there for 29 years.
[20:10]And I said to Edward, my emotionless husband,
[20:14]my dead body that I travel around with.
[20:17]I said, I'm not here, is he?
[20:19]Nope, okay.
[20:20]And he'll never watch this.
[20:22]So we can say whatever we want.
[20:23]Um, but I said to him, like, I think that we should
[20:29]move to New York, I think it will keep us young,
[20:32]in the way that it kept my dad young.
[20:34]And he was all in.
[20:35]And so we sold our house in California,
[20:38]and we bought a place in Tribeca,
[20:39]and we walked the streets of New York,
[20:42]and I see him everywhere.
[20:44]I mean, like, St. Patrick's Cathedral.
[20:47]Like, that's like a total home base for us.
[20:49]We used to go to noon mass, like the quick 20 minute,
[20:53]get your communion, and then go to the lunch,
[20:55]and drink too much.
[20:56]Me too much.
[20:57]And then lie about having a customer there.
[20:59]I mean, it's amazing that you feel from church,
[21:02]where it's like, do not lie to, like, yeah,
[21:04]this is on the company.
[21:05]And, um, no connection.
[21:09]Um, but anyway, so he's everywhere for me here in New York.
[21:14]And it's like wonderful to kind of,
[21:16]like I just say out loud, hey, greenie.
[21:18]And I see a greenie, um, so yeah.
[21:21]And he would love, he would love this book.
[21:23]So interestingly, to bring it back to Marianne,
[21:26]in the story, her dad has this line, like, um,
[21:29]I love this sport, and so will you.
[21:31]And he's got her signed up for soccer.
[21:33]And so totally not her jam.
[21:35]And he's not really like reading the room.
[21:37]As many parents don't, I mean, many parents
[21:40]are laying their own childhood
[21:41]on top of their kids' childhood
[21:43]until further notice, until the child rebels.
[21:46]And then at the end, he catches her.
[21:49]She tells a lie to get out of soccer.
[21:51]She goes home.
[21:52]She's working on this enormous invention
[21:54]that she's got in her mind, and then he catches her.
[21:58]And he says, Mary Ann, are you a baker?
[22:01]And she says, no, I'm a maker.
[22:03]And then she kind of opens the door
[22:05]and you see this like wonderland of creation
[22:08]that she's got going.
[22:09]And then the end of it is,
[22:11]and on that afternoon, momentous, her dad
[22:14]became her new apprentice.
[22:16]And I feel that with my dad.
[22:18]My dad was a phenomenal athlete,
[22:21]both just super successful,
[22:22]but also just devoted to sports.
[22:24]Like, he wanted to play a game of anything
[22:27]anytime with anyone.
[22:29]Like, there's a million stories at his funeral
[22:31]about him at 75 years old trying to scare up
[22:34]a tennis game with like a 30-year-old.
[22:37]And, you know, he's out there in his diapers
[22:39]and the 30-year-olds like, who is the sky?
[22:41]And so, anyway, I'm not athletic.
[22:46]I tried, but it didn't work.
[22:49]And it just involves so much sweating and showers, I find.
[22:53]And that's not really how I like to roll.
[22:55]Yeah, you know, like to shower.
[22:56]You know, like to shower?
[22:57]I don't like to shower.
[22:59]I don't.
[23:00]Maybe you can tell.
[23:01]And I like to make things.
[23:06]And so, like, he set me out.
[23:07]So instead of like forcing it,
[23:09]he used to work from a cause magazine.
[23:13]So you don't even know what that is.
[23:14]It's like the precursor to get housekeeping,
[23:16]which I don't even know if that's still on a new stance.
[23:18]But anyway, there used to be these things called magazines.
[23:21]And he brought home all the old magazines
[23:25]and then a box of the McCall stationery
[23:27]with like the raised McCalls,
[23:29]like really back in the old days
[23:31]when they would like type up a letter.
[23:33]And he gave me the back of the hall closet.
[23:37]So there were two rows of coats
[23:39]and he moved all the coats to the front row
[23:41]so that I could crawl underneath the coats
[23:43]and set up my office of creative direction.
[23:46]And then he took me into an ad agency as a kid
[23:49]and took me into the creative director's office,
[23:51]which is like the most magical eye-popping place
[23:54]with like the rows of markers
[23:56]with all the different kinds of tips
[23:58]and the light table and the beautiful see-through paper
[24:04]that's crinkly that you can do the tracing.
[24:06]I mean, it was like,
[24:07]oh, I can't, I'd never wanna leave this place.
[24:10]And then I kind of tried to set it up
[24:12]in the back of this closet.
[24:13]And whatever I was doing,
[24:15]like it was almost impossible to talk about,
[24:16]like nobody knows how to talk to a kid about their collage.
[24:20]But your brother walks in the door
[24:22]and he's got like the blackout under his eyes
[24:24]and he's all sweaty and people the whole room turns
[24:26]and says, did you win?
[24:27]What was the score?
[24:28]Did you score?
[24:30]Like everybody knows how to have that conversation.
[24:32]And there I was, like off to the side,
[24:35]like gluing and day-co-paging
[24:37]and using an exacto knife.
[24:39]And really, I was building these like dioramas
[24:42]of like women in their lives.
[24:44]And they were often vacuuming
[24:45]because that was what people did
[24:48]in McCall's magazine, like that's what the photos were,
[24:51]you know, or smoking.
[24:54]And, or smoking and vacuuming.
[24:59]So anyway, he was so into what I was into.
[25:03]And I think that that's a part of the message
[25:05]of Mary Ann the Maker, which is like, know your kid.
[25:08]A kid never lies or cheats about the thing they love.
[25:12]So if they're trying to get out of something,
[25:14]if you have to drag them to the car
[25:17]every time, maybe you're missing them.
[25:19]Maybe they're trying to tell you something.
[25:21]And I think it's partly our job
[25:24]to have the guts to leave a little unstructured time
[25:27]and let a kid lead.
[25:29]You know, Claire says it's so tiring,
[25:33]always being the receiver of information.
[25:36]She's like every adult is trying to teach me something.
[25:38]They all have a little lesson
[25:40]that they want to impart to me.
[25:41]And it's kind of exhausting.
[25:43]And I was like, right, it's like Mary Ann,
[25:45]like Mary Ann is sick of being taught things.
[25:47]She wants to be the teacher.
[25:49]At a minimum she wants to be left alone.
[25:51]But in a perfect world,
[25:53]people would come up behind her and say,
[25:55]what are you doing?
[25:56]Tell me how you're doing it.
[25:57]That's so cool.
[25:58]How are you using that can?
[26:00]But it's almost like a tactical limitation.
[26:03]Like I do think that it's not that easy to talk about
[26:07]these kind of random, crazy creations that people make.
[26:11]And so they don't.
[26:12]And so it feels that the world is less interested in us
[26:17]than they are in, say, the athletes,
[26:19]not to set up this binary because there are plenty
[26:21]of hyper creative kids who also love to break a sweat.
[26:25]I just wasn't one of them.
[26:27]Kelly, thank you so much.
[26:29]Thank you for coming on.
[26:30]It's so welcome.
[26:30]It's amazing.
[26:31]Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibi,
[26:34]formerly momstone have time to read books.
[26:37]If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review,
[26:40]follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens,
[26:43]and spread the word.
[26:44]Thanks so much.
[26:45]Go and buy the books.