A Thousand Words

Remember Luca Man? Luca Man was my youngest son’s drawing of a matter of fact face with two eyes and a straight line of a mouth. He repeated this drawing over and over until I made too big a deal out of it and he refused to draw it ever again.

That hasn’t stopped Luca’s artistic streak, though. Since Diana and I banished all screens during the week, our sons have been forced to the art table. I believe not being allowed to watch The Disney Channel is what fueled Van Gogh.

Our walls are filled with Luca masterpieces. Robots, dinosaurs and an autumnal series of ghosts, spider webs and vampires.

And like all great artists, from time to time Luca will declare, “I’m pretty great at art.”

Diana informed him he could actually pursue art as a career. But this disturbed him. He anxiously asked me how he would have time to have a job as an artist, a fireman and live with mommy. I told him there would be plenty of time between fires and getting cats out of the tree to paint portraits of his mother.

Elijah also dabbles in art. But his medium is apologies.

When he beats his brother or trashes his room or leaves a half eaten pudding cup in our sheets, he will create a drawing depicting his transgression with the words “I’m sorry” scrawled across the top.

I love this because it’s a heck of a lot more sincere than mumbling a mea culpa while suppressing a smile.

Take last night, for instance. In the course of a raucous game of Hide and Seek Eli and Luca destroyed a large potted plant in our office. Schuyler the sitter spent the time she would normally dedicate to dinner cleaning up the massive pile of dirt. So Diana had to feed the boys after a trying day in the wine mines.

Eli drew a big image of Diana frowning with a question mark over her head. Our unused oven was depicted in the corner and he drew little kids yelling and smiling. The caption read, “Sorry mom. We did not have dinner.”

His other apology from last night is described with permission from Diana. You’ll see why in a minute.

This one shows me and Luca and Eli sitting at the dining room table.  We all have very sad faces. On the other half of the page, he drew our bathroom, complete with a urine-filled toilet. He drew Diana with a frown on her face and a liberal and graphic depiction of her, um, time of the month. Across the top, he wrote, “Sorry (again).”  

I have no idea why he felt like it was his fault. I guess that’s for him and his therapist to figure out in 20 years.

I begged Diana to let me put the drawing in the blog. She agreed, but in the cold light of day, I’ve decided to share this cute photo of the boys at the nature center.