Painting

Julia is home this morning because of an ear ache. We go to the doc and he says ear infection. We are done at 10:30 but I decide to keep her at home with me. To spend a day quietly and together. I would have never done that with Cheshire -- an old mother may be a good person to have.

So, Julia is home for the day and after we napped or layed down quietly, and I blew snow and walked the dog, we have lunch and do reading work. Julia was patient and did as I asked. I don't know whether she so much reads or does what I ask. I don't know whether she would try to read another thing if I did not bring out the words and book and workbook. But I do and she does. I know that she likes books, she likes to be read to and she understands what she reads and hears. Her teachers, her speech therapists and I agree on this one, but -- how do you say -- she has not caught the bug to read.

Then we bring out the paints. Julia has not painted much. we have paints and brushes but we don't paint. We don't draw either but I've done a fair amount of drawing for our schedule and maybe that counts, but I see that her line therapists have no luck suggesting painting. So, I clear the table after lunch and reading and I suggest nothing. I bring out the box of poster paints that we have and ask her to chose 5 objects. She picks 5 ponies (My Little . . . ) and lines them up on the table. She first puts 7 ponies in a line. I ask her to count them and she realizes that it is not 5 she put down (!), and takes three away. Then I ask her to count again and she discovers she has 4. When I ask her what she needs to make 5 ponies, she puts one down. (Does she understand or was that just lucky?) I ask her to chose 5 paints and she does -- two pinks, a citron green, a blue, and violet. We put a brush in each paint, roll up our sleeves and paint. I make crude representations of the ponies, Julia works on a picture of one pony. All in pink but with a lot of color. She captures something, quite crude, but she is really enjoying herself. After what seems like a long time -- I am more than done, she is playing with shape and color -- she announces she is done. Her hands are full of pink paint and she washes very well and then she is ready to begin again.

I leave the ponies out on a piece of green paper but put the hyacinth that we bought two days ago in the middle and ask her to draw the plant. She tells me she will put a flower in her picture but first she has to paint the table. She starts with blue and something like a table appears. Then there is some violet that looks like leaves and some yellow that might be flowers. Then she forgets about the plant on the table.

20 minutes later she is still layering paint. She does not look like a kid -- these days I am seeing Julia as about 6. Most of the time, she acts like she is in kindergarten. I felt her 4 for a very long time. I am not sure that we passed through 5 or just jumped to 6 -- but this is not a kid of 6. She sits, back ram-rod straight, holding the paint brush like a pencil but without uneasy tension. She dips the brush into the paint as if she is in full control of what she is doing, as if she understands something about the paint. What does she know, what does she feel. She is incredibly regulated. Peaceful, her shoulders are down, her non-painting hand holds the paper lightly or falls to her side. She stands as she lets go of the flower and starts applying color in ever widening circles on the page. I have seen some of these kinds of pictures come home from school art class and I wondered about them.

Now I understand.

What I see is what I saw before she began drawing. She made circles, she completely covered pages with her pencil shapes and she worked at understanding the pencil and the marks it made for months before she started drawing. I don't know if she did the same thing with clay -- shapes and then animals came and went so quickly with clay the I have no progression except that one day there were dinosaurs out of clay. Someone suggested that the circles on the page instead of any attempt at image might be a sign of autism, but it was only Julia practicing and getting to know a pencil before shapes emerged.

But now the page -- pink to begin with -- is covered with green, blue, pink, and that darker pink. She uses the violet. Is is just a huge circle, is it the sun. What will this child do with oils. We have to do a lot of painting this summer.

Julia doesn't mind me taking pictures but she doesn't look up. She doesn't mind me typing as she works. I do not have her interest and to be painting all this time is far beyond me.