A boy and his uncle. My son and my brother. It’s Christmas 2015 and they are drawing together, my grandmother’s antique dining room table draped in a protective sheet of plastic. There are watercolours and acrylics, a spiral-bound sketchbook, pencils, an eraser. James has perched his phone at the top of the pad, presumably holding an image that Seamus is using for reference. It’s hard to tell what they’re working on, but this was certainly during Seamus’ Pokemon phase. James always liked drawing cartoons too, so that would make sense.
The rest of the family is scattered around the house; there must be someone in the kitchen, someone by the fire in the living room, someone reading a book, someone playing a game or doing a puzzle. But these two, in the fading afternoon light reflected off the snow outside, are drawing.
My brother James has always been the artist in the family. I love that he recognizes my son’s love of drawing and has tried to nurture it. I love that they can do this thing together.
But how do you find that fine line, as a parent or an uncle or a teacher, between nurturing a child’s natural interest in something without pushing them away from it? I don’t remember how this moment started, and I wish I did. I wish I could hear that conversation. The uncle’s invitation, the little shrug of those narrow 11-year old shoulders that would translate in any language to enthusiastic agreement. Or did James just create the right environment at the right time? A friendly trap, made of paper and paint and non-judgemental guidance, set between lunch and dinner? How could a tiny artist’s heart resist?
Yet he resists it now. Something changed in the many afternoons that have passed since then. The sketchbook, long forgotten in a desk drawer. The pencils, once sheltered in their special box with the care of a reverent child, now live with the pens and markers in the jar by the phone, or under the sofa, or in the bottom of a backpack. He said it wasn’t fun anymore, not since he took a high school art class and had his work graded. His uncle is too far away, our visits too far between. I let it go. You can only make so many invitations, set so many traps.
Seamus found the sketchbook the other day, nearly empty, the last drawing from years ago. Showed it to me, asked if I knew where the pencils were.
Don’t worry, I was cool.
I am learning how to hold a fragile moment like that without crushing it. Taking my lead from my brother’s careful attention. Sitting close, nearly touching, pencil in hand. I’m here if you need me.