Ten Minute Missive

Years ago my parents had a house fire. It was a complete loss. All the boxed up toys and books of my childhood are gone now except for the memories of them. And last night one of those memories came to me. I loved my Spirograph. It was probably my sister’s but I spent plenty of time aligning the wheels and pins. Enough time that making Spirographs is a dear childhood memory.

There was something so pleasing to me to make all those intersecting colorful lines, some big and some small, but all intersecting and connecting. I loved the way the paper felt almost like fabric after enough circles were traced upon it. A sniff of a completed masterpiece was more than a sniff of ink. It was the smell of possibility.

Last night I was reading my Twitter feed after having been out of town for nearly a week. I had missed my social network friends – the people who connect with me in ways large and small but without that connection I am slightly bereft. I thought about how I’ve connected with these people both on social networks as well as in real life.

What came to mind was a colorful spirograph. A few Google searches later and I was on a math site drawing my own “space racer” and practicing my math skills. But what I was really doing was creating a visual aid of all the ways I connect and intersect with other people in going about the business of my life, aka living.

If there were a spirograph of my life, I am happy to say, it would be a large and very complicated spirograph. There would be lots and a lots of different colors and even more loops circling one another.

I think I might ask Santa for a Spirograph this year. I think now is a good time to create a beautiful spirograph. But with each revolution of my pen I think I will say the name of someone important to me. I also think I’m going to need lots of pens and lots of paper.

How about you? If you were to make a spirograph, what would it look like?