Thank You Mom

I’d like to take a moment and thank my mother. Without her, the life that I now have probably wouldn’t exist. And I don’t mean her giving birth to me. I just mean the creative person I’ve become in recent years was because of her. From my books, to the very site you’re on right now most likely wouldn’t exist.

I don’t normally get personal in my writings but consider this “my story”. It started when I was younger, of course. I’ve always liked the fleur-de-lis symbol. If you don’t know what this symbol looks like, it’s what the New Orleans Saints use as their logo. My mom had a clock with this symbol on it and coupling that with my love for playing cards, I’d always thought that this symbol would be cool as a suit for a deck of cards. I never did anything with it though. It was just a thought I had.

Fast forward several years and I still had this idea in the back of my mind. However, I had mentioned it to a few people now, including my mom. I had gotten a few other symbols together and designed in my head, a new deck of cards. Suits, faces, everything. This is what started my love for designing new cards as I noticed that cards were all the same.

It was my mom who then suggested I actually make them. Bring the idea to life and create the cards. I had no idea on how to do that though. I had never done anything like that nor did I even know where to start. My mom, however, had been using Microsoft Publisher for a little while and introduced it to me. I still had no real desire on actually making them though.

It wasn’t until one day that I was at work and her and my sister had come up to visit as they often did. She then showed me that she had been working on the idea and she printed off what she put together. It wasn’t until I actually saw the physical paper that I realized that it could even be done. Seeing it in my hands, changed my whole perspective. It wasn’t what I had in mind but to see her bring my idea to fruition made me get into it now. We worked on it together and I still have that laminated deck to this day.

So, this is what started my creative journey. From there, I created new themes for different decks. Then that lead to me creating my own games. I have about four or five games I’ve created. Maybe I could get them on the shelves of stores one day. You never know. Many who have played them seem to like them.

Then, that led me to create my own comics. As I was dabbling with graphic design, I put some clip art together and made my own one-frame comics. They’re mostly puns so very few like them, I think. I guess I have a rare sense of humor.

This led me to make my own evangelism graphics for my Facebook ministry page, Gates of Life. They are just short verses or thoughts that I’ve come across in order to evangelize on the internet. Throw in some quotes I’ve come up with along with my articles I write and I felt I was doing pretty well. Ideas would just come to me. It was as if the more I used my creativity, the more my creative faucet was running. I come up with new ideas for things almost every day. Now, I wouldn’t say I’m a graphic designer by any means, but being able to put these out helped me to understand it more.

That brings me to the peak of my creativity. My writing. I never would have dreamed of writing a children’s book, let alone a novel. I viewed novelists as someone on a whole new level of creativity. One I couldn’t obtain. Lo and behold, I did. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. Much like my cards, inventions, etc. the more I wrote, the more the ideas kept coming out. After about a two-year process, I was finally able to publish my novel, Quickening Ceres, in January 2019 and I’ve never felt more accomplished about anything. Just goes to show that humans can do anything we put our mind to. I’m in the middle of writing my second novel now.

This is where I’d like to thank my mom. Unfortunately, I can’t. She passed from this life back in 2016 after losing her second bout with cancer. It was all because of that couple of playing cards she made that she was able to help me unlock my creativity chest.

I have a wonderful supporting cast in my life. It’s a little hard though, her also not being able to bask in my accomplishments with me and push me through my failures. She was one of the best. I can only hope to carry on that support system she taught me for others I know in this life.

Thank you Mom.