Living outside a tourist town is fun because people we like actually come visit us. Cousins-Who-Are-Also-Friends spent a long weekend defusing, getting back to nature out at our place. While the men solved the world's problems and we women talked about the men, while Zac and Dylan dodged deer and stalked tarantulas, Iz, who is only eleven months shy of turning six-years-old entertained herself with a tablet of pastel paper and a fistful of markers. Silently, still as a camouflaged fawn she worked on one drawing for maybe half an hour. (Half an hour of silent stillness being remarkable in a five-year-old.) Then, she asked where I kept the trashcan. Matter-of-factly, Isabelle the artist slid her lovely, colorful drawing of our dog, Cooks in with the coffee grounds, discarded lemonade cans and what remained of blueberry muffins. When her mom asked why she threw her drawing away, Iz gave a tiny sigh. She explained that one of the dog's ears was darker than the other. Cooks's ears do happen to be the same color. We couldn't argue. I did tell Iz her drawing was very good, despite the dark ear, but by then, she was flipping over a fresh piece of paper. She did the same scene, same dog over again, this time with matching ears. Her only comment about having to do the piece over pertained to a row of tulips across the bottom. The little pointed petals gave her fits. Really hard to paint in, but she really likes tulips. So she deemed them worth doing over.
Iz gave me the new painting. But when I think of her sitting there at the table that morning, I see the first one, the one with a dog with one dark ear. Even though that short-lived drawing joined the muffin crumbs and coffee grounds before its time, Isabelle created it, and I saw it, and I remember it. That makes it art, same as the do-over piece currently hanging on our refrigerator. And for Iz, drawing apparently is as much about the process of creating as displaying a finished product. I'll try to remember that, next time I spend an afternoon painting something that doesn't work for me. Every one of us must spend our time doing something. For an artist, time spent creating is never wasted. And tulips are always worth doing over.