DIY and the Art of Parenting

Are children as easy as doorknobs?

When I first realized writing was something I would do, or try to do, regularly, I decided to carve out dedicated space in my house for a writing desk. Possibly I did this to legitimize my newfound sense of myself as a writer, one who writes. Or, it could be that I set aside time to create a writing space as an elaborate procrastination scheme to avoid the writing I’d decided I was going to do.

Probably it was both.

Not that I didn’t love writing at the desk in my living room, situated directly in the flight path of my three large-footed migratory sons, right next to the Sports Delivery System (which is how I think of my television from about the beginning of football season to around the end of baseball season, which ends up being basically the whole year). It was distracting to write there, and sometimes the noise and the foot traffic and the sudden need of one or the other of my children to access the computer for schoolwork was enough to convince me that I didn’t have anything important to write about, anyway.

And writing would go out the window again. As a single working mother, there are always plenty of justifiable reasons not to write. Lack of a physical space, I decided, would not be one of them.

Until an unwanted divorce, home improvement skills had not been in my skill set. My talents lay elsewhere. Most of us have a short…