Not My Canvas

 

“It never turns out the way I imagine it,” she said, with tears in her eyes and disappointment on her face.

We’re trying something new this school year, starting each homeschool day with art. I provide a steady rotation of sculpting and sketching prompts, with a once a week watercolour painting date thrown into the mix (when I’m feeling brave).

It’s time consuming and messy and I am not great at coming up with creative and thought provoking prompts (unless “paint something with a bird” counts) but we are doing it and my kids sometimes even tear themselves away from their elaborate creative games to start school for the day with only a few complaints. (Math worksheets do not have this same effect.)

Somewhere between the squabbles over who gets the first paintbrush cup and my confiscating the (now empty) cup and dripping watercolours set from the four year old, the creativity flows.

We’ve sketched sunsets in monochrome, explored adding paint to wet paper, followed step-by-step instructions in painting books and sculpted friendly monsters. Without fail, one child’s art includes something Minecraft or animal related, another goes for the abstract look and the third tries to capture life in as many intricate details as possible.

A dreamer, the detailed art child often has a very specific vision of how her art will turn out. This morning’s watercolours bleed into each other in chunky paint brush strokes and don’t fulfill this very specific vision.

It’s not good enough, not turning out the way she expected. She wants to start over.

I know how this feels.

A few tears and a hug later, we have a chat about disappointment.

(I have another child whose post-art life skills chats involve advice about the value of taking a break and not painting holes into your paper out of frustration but that is a story for another day.)

We discuss how things don’t always turn out the way we envision, that they sometimes have minds of their own. We chat about how sometimes starting over is ok and other times changing nothing is okay too, that there is value (and even beauty) in the imperfect.

She thinks I am talking about painting, that I am giving art advice. But I am also talking about life.

I’m talking about how everything changes when we’re handed a blank canvas swaddled in a striped flannel hospital blanket.

I’m talking about how parenting books and the internet and well-meaning family members provide step-by-step instructions for painting these canvases ourselves, with a side of pressure to avoid the brushstrokes of “bad” sleep habits and feeding choices and a child who hasn’t added academic prowess or a dozen friends or employable skills to his or her resume before the age of three.

When I taught high school, pregnant with my first and clueless about parenting, I recall a conversation with a student about his future aspirations. He said to me, “My parents say I’m going to be a doctor.” I suspected he didn’t believe this or even wish it for himself, but he felt their insistence that he perform beyond his abilities and outside his areas of strength to fulfill someone else’s dream.

Sensing his turmoil, I vowed I would never leave my kids staring at their own unrecognizable canvases, wishing for a do over.

I am the supplier of paints and the washer of paintbrushes and the wiper of the paint splattered table. I am the one who hands out aprons and refills the water. I make observations. I tell stories. I wipe tears and listen to frustration. I encourage. I even paint alongside them sometimes. I am, without a doubt, shaping their masterpieces (both literally and figuratively).

But I am not holding their paintbrush; it’s not my canvas.

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This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in this series "Do-Over."