My son was called into school for his Kindergarten assessment test, and like all teachers of small children, his had a project for the mom to do in the other room. She had me trace the outline of my son on a piece of butcher paper and left me with four tempera paint colors to render him en vivo. It’s been a while since my medium was butcher paper and tempera, I tell you what. I had red, yellow, blue, and brown. Suddenly, I recalled the cut outlines of the other kids I’d seen hanging in the hall, painted by what I had assumed were children. In that moment I knew that mine had to be the best picture of a child ever on paper with tempera.
I set my toddler on a chair with a book and some orange segments and got to work. I reworked the outline with the pencil; rounding, defining the edges, checking the proportions, putting in detail on the pants and shoes. My toddler got off his chair and started moving the little paint pots, picking them up one by one and handing them too me. I found myself getting annoyed at toddler and his attempts to distract me. I was engaged in high opus here! “Go sit down! Eat your oranges!” He ignored me.
Since the teacher had provided clumsy kindergarten brushes, I put in texture and shadow with heavier paint. “I’ve got to start carrying around my own brushes,” I murmured to myself, ready to add another half a pound of art supplies to my purses just in case another project crept up on me. Toddler dipped two fingers into the yellow and started wiping them on the floor. “Stop it!” I hissed. I found a Sharpie and outlined the facial features, added more details on his shirt, stitching on his pants, and placed a few strands of hair just so.
The teacher walked in and said, “Wow! I’ve never seen one this well done! You’ve done this before, haven’t you? Someone’s mom is talented!” I demurred, but was really pleased that I’d made an impression.
Then it struck me, the best? Bound and determined to knock everyone else’s project out of the park? What is going on here? How can I become, in under a minute, completely and utterly obsessed with having the superlative butcher paper outline of a child to hang on a wall? Was it merely being inside a school building? All those years I spent driven to be the best academic, the best actor, the best reader, the best at everything, it all came back to me on the industrial tile floor of a Kindergarten art room. I’d turned it into competition to prove that I was the best, not to paint a picture of my child.
Yes, it was important to me for him to know that his mom painted a really cool picture that looked just like him, down to the hazel eyes, but I knew that I’d turned it into something about me. To my shame, there had even been a small wave of resentment breaking as the toddler demanded parenting while I wanted to get the shade of the skin exactly right. I felt silly. I’m a grown woman, but my twin drivers are still perfectionism (for some things) and competition (but only sometimes.)
Even now, I want to get back to that school because I realized that I didn’t color in his pupils to the right inky black. I wonder if anyone will notice when I pull out my very own Sharpie out of my purse and color in those eyes…
Help!
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