By Sue Murphy
Last week, I hurriedly stuck some watercolor paints in the mail to my granddaughter. The poor child had run out of purple.
Purple is her favorite color, and that’s important. A favorite color is the preschool version of the crucial Alabama/Auburn choice. When I told my granddaughter that my favorite color was blue, she gave me a knowing nod, as if to say, “Ah, so that’s who you are.” Grandpa Harold declared for green. No telling where that leaves him.
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that it wasn’t always so. I used to be a pink devotee. That’s the way life is. Purples become pinks, pinks become blues. Some people even veer off into green.
People change. The way they see the world changes. It’s evident in the lineup of preschool artwork I keep on the bulletin boards in the cousins’ bedroom. We’re still waiting for our youngest guy to quit chewing on the crayons, but the other three have been busy interpreting life in crayon and paint and glitter, lots of glitter.
They all started going ‘round and ‘round with whatever implement was at hand. Sometime after they turned two, they did portraits. Again, there was a circle (usually purple) but all of a sudden we saw (they saw) eyes and a mouth. Occasionally, there was a nose, but it didn’t seem to be required.
My older grandson, who is several years ahead of the pack, has been there and done that and moved on. His faces have noses and ears and hair. Having watched his artwork develop, I know that, like pollywogs, the rest of our purple faces will soon sprout legs, two sticks coming straight down out of the circle. I don’t know what triggers it, but later, there will be arms, again two sticks branching out of the face, but this time in east-west fashion. Torsos won’t appear until much later, which is interesting to me since belly buttons are already extremely popular.
The kids will branch out to do pictures of the world around them. The sky will be up and the grass (always green) will be scrubbed in across the bottom of the page. There will be animals, too, who remarkably come with legs already attached. One of my favorite pictures is my grandson’s rendition of the Christmas camels, complete with knobby little knees. And before they’ve ever actually seen one, their worldview will include rainbows that arch vividly across the paper and make their grandmother smile.
I used to love to draw and paint, but I haven’t done a lot of it since I became a stodgy old grownup. I’ve noticed that some of my fellow grownups have allowed themselves a box of crayons, but only as long as they use them to fill in the shapes in a coloring book where the rainbows are already drawn in.
Being a crossword puzzle fan, I understand the satisfaction of completing things, bringing order out of chaos, finding yourself at the end of the page with something you can call “well done.”
It’s a “good girl” compromise, but I’m hoping these colorers occasionally sneak in a blank sheet of paper and just let loose with circles and lines and squiggles. Not for framing, not for the sake of finishing, just for the pure joy of going ‘round and ‘round with a color of their own choosing. Maybe it will be purple. And maybe they’ll see where they are, how they’ve come to see the world, or maybe they’ll just have fun.
Closet coloring. Do it. I won’t tell.
