A Work of Art

My parents have this picture I made for them when I was about ten years old. It's a picture of Santa Claus and a Christmas tree with toys under it. And, just to show that I was versatile in various mediums, I went all out and used puff paint for this particular masterpiece. Yep, I was cool. Anyway, every year at Christmas time, they pull this picture out and put it up on their refrigerator. They even had it laminated for good measure, making it next to impossible to tear or cut up, as I had tried to do so many times years later. Now, it's become sort of a standing joke, that when I come to visit and go to open the refrigerator, I am stopped dead in my tracks by the deformed looking Santa (and is that his sack on his back or is he somehow related to Quasi Moto?) I always roll my eyes and make a crack about taking the picture somewhere very far away and putting it out of it's misery, to which my mom exclaims, " NOOooo- you leave that picture right where it is! Someday you'll have children and they'll make pictures for you and you'll think they're the most beautiful things in the world and you'll want to keep them too."

Now, let me be brutally honest: I've worked in several nurseries and done my fair share of babysitting enough to know that most of the pictures I've seen kids draw have been, well, the word ugly springs to mind. Some have even been downright insulting. A few years ago, I was in church and a little girl I used to babysit walked up at the end of the service and told me she had drawn a picture of me for me to have as a gift. And there I was: a long torso, midget legs, and fins for arms. I had a few strands of hair that were styled into a mullet and my forehead showed indications of a thalidomide birth defect. Yeah, real nice, kid. I'm glad to know that's what you think I look like. Somehow, I was able to mask my look of horror, forced a "thank you," and managed to take it all the way home with me, where Jake and I had a good laugh over it and it was then promptly placed in the trash can.

Instances like that, plus my disdain toward my mom's sentimentality over the Santa Claus/Hunchback picture fueled my belief that I would probably poke fun at my own kid's artwork someday too, (but not to their face, obviously). Ah, but parenthood seems to have a way of making us eat our words or pre-conceived notions. Ella picked up some crayons yesterday, so I got a piece of paper and taped it to the table and let her go to town. I was a little leary of leaving her with a box of crayons at her disposal, as only 2 months ago, I had tried to show her how to hold a crayon and scribble and she had instead found them more enticing to eat rather than to draw with. This time, however, she had figured out how to hold the crayons and had seemingly forgotten that they had ever tasted good. I watched her look of concentration as she figured out exactly the right angle to hold the crayon and saw how her eyes lit up as she began to make marks on the page. A few minutes later, I walked back over to find that she had even used several different colors and there were scribbles, zig-zags and curvy lines scrawled all across the paper- her first official piece of artwork. I almost had to stop myself from tearing up, but I suspect the pregnancy hormones were mostly to blame for that. Either way, it was beautiful and it was a part of her. And in that moment, I understood why my fugly Santa picture still adorns my parents refrigerator at Christmastime. Probably for the same reason that my mom has kept my baby dolls and barbies. They are reminders of her little girl as well.

So, I now resign myself to having my refrigerator and walls overtaken by my daughter's creative musings. The house is already covered in Fisher Price and Leap Frog toys, so why not go all out, right? Another milestone is reached and I am both the proud and sentimental Mama I swore I would never be. But I'm totally okay with that. :-)