Artist In The Making

As I said in early posts, we're getting slammed here with the humidity and temps, but mostly the humidity. It feels like August in early June, but that is the weather in Georgia. Yesterday one of my dear friends called. We hadn't talked in weeks, so I settled Daughter with her supper in front of the TV--I know I'm bad--and started playing catch up. We talked about I-Pods, writing, family, the amount of water that is needed to make it through the day. It was glorious. Then, I remembered Hubby's supper in the oven that by the way did get just a teeny bit overcooked. I entered the kitchen and there sat Daughter, who is eight, scrubbing at her legs with wet paper towels. The empty paper towel tube sat next to her on the white floor. 

The scrubbing was only spreading a white substance up her legs. It also covered her arms and hands. She took one look at me on the phone and said, "Don't tell 'Friend's Name' about this."

Now normally this would give me a melt down, especially when I saw the little white footprints on my hardwood floors. The look on this child's face and maybe the heat caused me to begin to giggle. I giggled until I cried. Maybe I was hysterical. 

"What have you done?" 

Daughter, catching on that she would live another day, smiled. "I painted you a picture." 

And that she did. I received a lime green paper with white hand prints and foot prints. She painted a memory that will stay with me forever. This is one of those stories I'll tell when she is grown and married. The ones we tell our grandchildren to get our children back, to plant ideas in their little minds.

I read somewhere that an artist suppressed her art for years because her mother threw a fit when she painted on her bedroom wall. Well, Daughter doesn't have to worry about her creativity being blocked this time :). 

Ann