Art Madness
Tate is beside herself, again. Desperate for me to stop ending her days. To stop dampering the all-out celebration she lives that the rest of us call daily ‘life’. She wants to decide when her day is over, when her meals are, when the bedtime routine starts. She wants to be in control! Even with a mother who allows her as many choices as I can think of, she’s still mad. It’s not enough.
“I’m sooooo mad! I can’t stand it! I’m gonna explode! I just, I just - it’s not fair. Not at all fair. Nothing’s fair. Whyyyyy. Whyyy, Mama!! Whyyyyy! I know what’s best. I’m, I’m …”
She marches to her art table and rifles through her paper box for some white. She scratches all over it. Hard, red oil-pastel scribbles. She throws that pastel down and grabs a black crayon lying nearby - black circles on top of each other. Swirls that overlap into darkness. Then more red - lines shooting off the ball of blackness, off the paper, onto her table some. Tate is now writing, words, furiously. Illegible, I assume. I’m dying to know what it says. I’m dying to crawl in close to understand this blow up better, her better, what I can do better …
Instead, I make myself ‘fake busy’ walking back and forth through the room she’s madly scribbling in, like I’m putting things away. Available and near but not pushing, not pressing. Letting her (hopefully) get it out. She peeks over her shoulder at me a few times but mostly is engrossed in her fury, spewing it all over that paper in every way she can think of. Soon, there’s banging. On my next pass-through, I see her slamming her big colored pencil into the table, creating holes and tears. All the while, she’s muttering and crying and intermittently yelling, “It’s just not fair!!!!”
Quietly, I remind her, “When you’re ready for a hug, just let me know.” I only say it a couple of times, so she doesn’t get more upset or forget when she’s done, that it’s there for her. No matter how bad her feelings feel.
After about twenty more minutes and lord knows how much more ‘artwork’, that little Tate of mine stomps her tall, lanky body to find me in the kitchen and with two straight arms holds the masterpiece of emotion out in front of her frowning face, toward mine. I exhale and nod, try to stay quiet, try not to read the words I can’t, just take it in. I ask her if I can have it, to which she replies, annoyed, “It’s FOR you.” I thank her, trying not to smile, still nodding and breathing. Feeling my feet on the kitchen floor.
As I set it on the counter, I ask if she’d like to hold hands on the way to bed. She sighs out the last of what she was holding in and asks me to carry her like a baby. I do.
Woah.
