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Thursday
night. Dinner was over and I finished my
homework. I felt kinda strange... not sad,
but definitely not happy. I had spent a
little part of every night this week
working on the offrenda for
Grandma Webster. Right now there was the
photograph of me and her, a square from a
knitted Afghan she was working on, a
little vase that once belonged to her
mother. I filled it with water and put in
two yellow daisies from our bushes. And
there's the candle. It all looked very
nice, but something was missing. I wish I
knew what it was.
I
lay down on my stomach and stretched out
my arms and legs as far as I could. My
toes touched the two metal door handles of
the bottom drawer of my dresser. I tucked
my toes underneath the handles and pulling
up with my feet, opened the drawer. I
don't use this drawer much anymore. It's
filled with stuff I saved from when I was
little. You know, a regular "junk" drawer
(everyone's got one). Old playing cards,
cheap plastic toys that people give out as
party favors. A whistle. An unfinished
(barely started) purple and orange
lanyard, a yellow ping pong ball. A rusty
key. A couple of seashells. It was kinda
fun to look at these ancient "treasures"
from my childhood, but none of them were
things I wanted to use in Grandma's
shrine. Then I saw the blue corner of a
box of water color paints that Grandma
Webster gave me for Christmas when I was
seven. And the pad of paper and the
instruction book that came with the set.
This was what I was looking for! I was
going to paint a picture for the
offrenda!
When
I was little I loved to paint. There was
something so wonderful about looking at
the colors in the box, all bright and
clean. Even though I'm not the neatest
person in the world, I always made sure
that my water colors never got their
colors mixed up. My little brother has had
sets like this, and after one time, just
one time of using them, all
eight little ovals of color look like
they're just the same color. And you know
what that color is? The color of mud! Of
course, he's never interested in using
them again. But for me, the thing I always
liked best was opening that box and seeing
that beautiful rainbow of colors all clean
and bright, and waiting for me to dip in
my wet brush and put some of those rainbow
colors onto some boring old white piece of
paper. And when I did that, I could make a
world. Yes, That's the way I thought of
it. In the same way that when you listen
to a story, you can close your eyes and
make a world from the words, I used to be
able to do that with colors... paints,
crayons, even with a plain old stubby
pencil.
So
what happened? When did I shut that paint
box for the last time and decide I was
never going to paint again? When did I
stop doing something that had been so much
fun for me and why?
I'm
not sure when this happened. I remember
loving the feeling of painting "designs"
(which is a kid's way of saying she
doesn't have any idea what she's making).
Just watching the paint and the water mix
and flow together over the paper and go
exactly where it wanted to go.
Then
I got this book about a girl living in
Arizona who had a wild pony she raised
from birth. I loved the story and even
though there were no pictures in the book,
I knew exactly what the girl and the horse
looked like. She was black, like me, and
the horse was white with brown patches.
They call them Pinto ponies. It was the
first time I ever tried to paint anything
realistic, but that didn't stop me. I very
carefully drew the horse and the girl with
light pencil, just like the instruction
book said. I remember being so excited
when the drawing was done and it was
finally time to start painting. I wanted
to start with the girl's face so I mixed
the color for her skin. That's where I got
in trouble. It wasn't that I mixed the
wrong color, I just used too much water or
paint or both. So when I touched my brush,
sopping with brown paint, to her face,
everything I had drawn so carefully,
instantly became a puddle!
I
was really upset, but before I had a
chance to rip up the picture and throw it
away, my sister came in to the kitchen.
She took one look at what I was doing and
said, "What happened to her face? Did the
horse throw her in the mud?" That made me
so angry I screamed at her. She just
laughed and ran away, which only made me
madder.
I
guess I decided never to paint again.
Pretty stupid.
But
I'm not a seven year old with hurt
feelings any more. I'm 15 and I'm ready to
paint again!
So
I painted a picture of Grandma Webster and
when I was done, I stepped back from it
and smiled at her, the way she was smiling
at me. It felt so great to be painting
again I decided to do another one. This
would be a gift for someone who had been
very kind to me.
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