Pretty Little Things
You asked me to look up and I did. I was so struck by how pretty the sky was that I was able to silence the running to-do list that I was going over in my head – the to-do list that had every 15 minute interval planned out from the moment that we walked into the house to midnight when I was likely to go to bed. I was also a bit embarrassed that I didn’t see the obnoxiously amazing sunset before you pointed it out. So per your request, my little love, I pulled over and we named the colors together. Because besides that fact that it was past 7pm and you are only three years old and needed to eat dinner already and you were in desperate need of a bath after dance class and the play date at the park where you and your buddy insisted on throwing sand in each others hair, a few additional minutes on the side of the road with my toddler, looking at the amazing summertime, rainbow sky just seemed to fit.
“The sky is really beautiful,” you told me.
And it was. And I quickly drove home after our colorful moment and pulled into the driveway and we sat on the porch until all of the pinks and blues and oranges and yellows turned black. And, because you are my daughter, you had the urge to paint before bath time and so we did. And I only took out the pinks and blues and oranges and yellows so that we can recreate the beautiful sky that we just saw. And you tried. But your tiny toddler hands struggled to hold the brush (plus you quickly grew tired of conventional art supplies as you usually do) so you slammed your hands in the pinks and blues and oranges and yellows and rubbed them together and smeared your chocolate creation onto the paper next to the palm tree that I drew for you. This all happened while I fed you grapes and pita chips and hummus and cubes of cheese like a little bird because your hands were covered in paint and because this moment was more important than sitting down at the table and eating the leftover casserole that I had in the fridge. Daddy would eat that when he came home from work.
And after you had smeared the last bit of brown paint on the paper, you scrunched up your teeny nose. It was the look that realized that the brown swirls did not match the pretty pinks and blues and oranges and yellows that we had just admired in the sky.
Your sky is prettier, my little love. A chocolate brown sky is way prettier.
