Happiness in Within

Our family story starts on the Texas winter storm 2021. In January we moved to a first-floor apartment with a big patio, since it was an easy move, we were able to organize all furniture and toys quickly with our 2 sons. We were happy to have a large patio and be able to play outside even in winter, and the kids were excited to be able to play inside the house without disturbing the neighbors downstairs. We spent a couple of great weeks in the new apartment.

Still, changes and accidents can come fast and unexpected. We were preparing to celebrate our oldest son’s birthday with a puppet show theater that we could share with our families over zoom and sharing the virtually with the family the birthday song and blow of the candles. Even though the light has gone out that morning on February 15th, we were still able to celebrate together the four of us enjoying board games and singing while waiting for for the power to come back, we didn’t expect it would take 5 days for the energy to return and that evening pipes would burst because of the freezing temperatures outside, causing our apartment to flood fast and furiously. We have little time to pick up a small number of things like blankets and some other basic things while we ran outside in the cold trying to find a place to spend the night that night. Thankfully we were able to move into an unoccupied unit, with basic necessities. In the new apartment, we decided to not stress out the kids and make happy memories together even in the strenuous conditions. We had to do our best for our kids to cope with the situation. We got some paper from the old apartment, markers, and scissors and we started to do origami figures and paper puppets. With paper and our imagination, we are able to cope with it and help the kids forget the tears of losing their toys, Legos, and the new house.

Benjamin the oldest, 7 years old started to paint and build his own happy stories using paper theater puppets. He is autistic and the anxiety always is easy to get out with painting. He paints a lot of the flooding and Godzilla. For him Godzilla is a monster who appears when something is not alright in the planet, so he started to prepare Godzilla puppet shows with environmental purpose. We help him make video stories that we are recording and keeping as a memento of the happy times together. It also rekindled my husband’s love for origami and by sharing that experience with our kids have found a renewed energy and creative output.

Just seeing our two sons paint and share it with them helps us create happiness. When we decided to be part of their paintings and creating stories together has changed our lives for the better. Even when losing most of our furniture and toys in the flood, and my husband losing his job a couple of weeks later. As a family, we want not to make a drama but to embrace this challenge with faith and good spirit. We want to create our for every night together with our little puppet shows. We try to make different themes and create a happy environment for all. Our favorites we recorded, and we watch over, and we are now learning to edit and add effects to possibly publish them on youtube in the future.

Benjamin and David paint, create stories, and imagine so many great things that we are impressed how a bad situation can create different dynamics in a family and how can we cope with art and storytelling.

Find something that you can build with your kids and enjoy creating with them, it will rekindle your creativity and happiness as a family in a wonderful way. I have seen some friends use legos, plushies, or playdoh to create wonderful worlds and boost happiness and imagination.