The flight of the bumble-bee

By Samantha Bluhm, with thanks.

When my son was 8-years-old, we decided to to turn off the television and spend the hour before bedtime journaling and reading together. We each had a journal and our own box of colored pencils.

In our journals we could doodle or draw, practice printing, write stories, scribble, tape or paste quotes or pictures. The journal was our place for processing our ideas or thoughts.

The ONLY rule we had was there was no judgment, no mistakes. Whatever we put in our journal was perfect and meant to be. We promised each other we would appreciate, accept and forgive ourselves.

Some days I would scribble a funnel cloud to capture the energy of my day. Other days, I would write poetry, draw a flower, or write a short story.

One night, my son spent a great deal of time on a picture of a garden filled with colorful flowers, bright sunshine and puffy clouds. It was the kind of picture you'd expect to see from a third grader. It was meticulous and beautiful and he was proud of his work. When he went to put the finishing touches on the page, he somehow slipped and the black pencil in his hand made a squiggly slash mark across half the page.

Tears swelled in my son's eyes because he thought the picture was ruined. He had worked so hard on the picture and his suffering nearly broke my heart. My instinct was to want to fix this for him. I wanted to suggest ways for him to brush it off and start again. But I didn't. Instead, I reminded him of our journal rules that everything was meant to be. I asked him to consider how the black line made the picture perfect.

I thought this was a challenging request for an 8-year-old who hasn't made his share of mistakes in life yet. He stared long at his picture as I continued to journal. My lip nearly bloody as I forced myself to allowed him to solve his own dilemma.

What happened next is a moment that has changed my life forever. His tears stopped. His body language shifted and he went back to work. I tried not to look as he grabbed a yellow and black pencil and began to draw again. When he was finished, he showed me the changes he made. He had added a tiny yellow and black body with wings to the end of the scribble. He explained that it was a bumblebee and the black squiggle was the flight pattern.

My son has always been a Cliff Claven of knowledge, remembering unusual facts and trivia. His face now filled with pride and sitting tall, he explained that a bumblebee's body is too big for its wings and defies all known laws of physics every time flaps its wings to fly.

He told me he was glad he made the mistake because he thought the new addition made his picture better.

I was in awe of my child. I witnessed firsthand the power of perspective and how mistakes often make our pictures better. We vowed to make this our motto and to this day, we remind ourselves of the magical flight of the bumblebee.

Samantha Bluhm