Ford – Page 10 – Stephanie Sicore

August 28, 2007August 28, 2007

To Ford, After Your first Day of Big Boy School

Ford, little man, I’m so in your dust.

Monday morning I overslept with just enough time to pack your lunch and shovel a bowl of food down your gullet, mostly against your will. It took me ten minutes just to find clean socks and another ten to find your shoes, tripping all the while over the mountains of camping laundry from the weekend, but in the nick of time we were out the door, and not looking back once at the red canoe still atop the car. I had a hard time focusing without the coffee I forgot to brew, wading through the muck of my anxieties, and keeping up with you. Down the sidewalk you skipped with your dad, as if already saying “seeyabye!” It just didn’t last long enough; I really wanted to hold onto the weekend, but Monday just slammed her big fat ass down in the drivers seat and I barely had time to grab the ‘oh shit!’ handles. And there we went.
Down the street.

We were a little early. You waited in the courtyard and watched little girls walk down the sidewalk, trailering Disney luggage on wheels. My eyes followed you as you measured every child that passed by. You asessed everything carefully, occasionally drawing attention but mostly appraising the morning as you bit your lip, squinted your eyes and surveyed the kinderscape.

We waited in the cafeteria for our orientation. You took a picture of me freaking out behind a plastic smile and I wondered how thankful you were to finally be free of my hysterics for 7 hours each day:

And, judging by your expression, I’d say you are pretty grateful!

After a brief Q&A in your homeroom, you kinderfolk rendezvoused to your new desks, and you were the first to start grabbing crayons and drawing on a piece of busywork coloring paper. The other kids mostly watched you start working, but within five minutes every child was eagerly coloring in the lines. We listening to a sappy book on saying goodbies on the first day of school, gross overkill with the best intentions from your sweet teacher, and as she read we watched you embellish your work.
Nice detail, Michaelangelo:

And despite the “Parent To Do List” that was written on the chalkboard, I was overcome with an uncontrolled bewilderment, a vacancy before me that I couldn’t ignore, and I had to put on shades in order to disguise my feelings, though I’m sure it only attracted sympathy from Damon, who managed to capture my first steps alone without you by my side, placing all my hopes in a basket before the teacher: that your spirit remain unbroken; that you never consider coloring as anything but busywork and fine motor practice; that you never stop asking questions; that your confidence doesn’t diminish; that you never stop trying; that you keep having fun; that you know life is school and the classroom is just structure, a place to bouce off ideas, not simply adopt them.

That’s it, roll those big brown eyes. Just don’t forget I’m crazy about you. CrAZY!!!
Love,
Mama

August 10, 2007August 11, 2007

Sticky Situation

Ikea has the cheapest breakfast outside of the home. In fifteen minutes we can be at the table, dunking french toast sticks into a bowl of maple syrup (not ideal, but Ford’s ideal, which he serves up himself) and feeling the warm sunlight pour through the floor-to-ceiling windows, penetrating the pores, the caffeine from the Swedish coffee slipping instantly into your bloodstream as if by DMSO. The eggs are synthetic but oddly satisfying, since we are always starving and they are always served steaming hot. There are beads of syrup on the table, collecting on their t-shirts, smeared between fingers. I sit there, across the table, sipping my coffee and wondering how they can stand their filth. Judging from the quiet, they couldn’t be more content with it.

Mama says Om.

August 7, 2007August 8, 2007

I heart kid’s art

Both children have the most charming creative style. They like to have, at all times, paper on their easels, and they like to let me know when it’s time to refresh the canvas. So I clamp a piece of paper onto the easel, and the kids do all the rest.

While I’m on the phone in the studio, Ford is kneeling on the floor before his easel, oil crayon in hand, gracefully weaving arabesques onto white paper like a dancer, partly like an experienced surgeon. He amazes me with his consistency and experimentation. At his age, I was drawing pure representation: rooms and school buses and horses, familiar things. Ford, thirty years later, has the same hair and chin, but the picture is completely different. He fills the page, works at will, picks up where he leaves off, whenever he chooses. One piece may hang, awaiting completion, for three days. He will flit back into the mudroom when I take a break to read mail, and will deliberately choose a medium, often something new that week, and experiment with the flow of the material on paper, the texture of its friction. Sometimes, he’ll add a Dalek, or a robot, or some other recognizable icon of current obsession.
Here, a Dalek for sure:

His abstract, expressionistic style has remainded consistent since he began making collages, at 18 months. Then, we used to sit at the dinette in the airstream, paper on the table and both weilding glue sticks. I’d ask him where this piece of torn paper wanted to go? Where does that piece belong? Do you think it belongs on the paper? Like conversation, documented in layers and textures, and I’ll remember this with a certain piognancy, as I remember his first steps (which he took in the same trailer!)

Chas is the same. Whether he has taken cues from Ford or not, he is also uninhibited. But while Ford’s marks bear a signature pattern, Chas’ style is vigorously expressive in one moment, exquisitely drawn in another. His hand bears dramatic pressure here, a faint scrawl there. Many times, lately, he is drawing something important to him, something concrete. A sea anemone, for example:

I look at them and grin, thinking to myself that it couldn’t get any better than this. It’s one of my most passionate goals, taht they retain this sense of urgency to create, to be free with their ability, uninhibited by convention. We will always keep a space for them, wherever we are, where their mind can pause (with or without the castaway shoes and fallen markers) and play with materials at hand.

I wish this for you, too. 🙂