"I" in Art

This past weekend we had balmy weather for the first time in months, and we were all buoyed by the rising energy born from the first, false promise of spring. Booker and Seamus, as usual, were the very first to arrive in Wheaton Regional Park early Sunday morning, and spent a good hour or so running from the Monster (me) around the various jungle-gyms, until finally other children began to trickle in. And then in the afternoon they rode up and down the sidewalk, chased by or chasing Finn and Xin Re, Booker on his two-wheeler, Seamus on his Skuut velocipede, the breeze pressing flat the forelocks peeking underneath their plastic shells.

With all this outdoor time, there was less brawling and bawling this weekend than anytime in recent memory. Everything was going swimmingly until we decided to go swimming, which required packing everyone into the car. On the way there, for reasons unfathomable to the adult mind, Seamus proferred his hand to Booker, reaching from one car seat to another across the narrow divide, and Booker gladly accepted, immediately taking it into his mouth and chomping down, leaving a complete but temporary impression of the upper anterior dental arcade. We were so wearied and frazzled by this latest offensive that Booker actually took our admonishments to heart. He sulked repentantly for a few minutes, and then insisted that we remind him of how sad he was once we got home, so he could write Seamus an apology note. Here is the product:

It is all there: the outstretched hand, the capricious maw, the squalling and swollen-mitted Seamus, the repentant Booker, his urgent apology (tellingly rendered as "sore") traveling straight from his head to Seamus's ear. Signed, more with the flair of an artist than the humility of a penitent, in bold and scrawling vermilion above the scene.

This child, according to Montgomery County Public Schools, is not doing so well in Art. Booker brought home his first report card this past week. He got mostly "P"s (Proficient?) but a few scattered "I"s (In Progress). Some of these, like Athletic Execution, were if anything optimistic. But "I" in Art? Please. He cannot paste his patterns in a straight line, true, but how many five-year olds carry around a book of Rube Goldberg's drawings (courtesy of Aunt Minou and Uncle Sean) and imitate them? Below is his latest Goldberg variation, a recipe for lemon squares:

On the left are two men fighting over a lemon. The lemon falls down a chute and rolls rightward, passing under a bath of flour and butter dropped down a conjoining chute by a celestial sous-chef. Deep underground, a worker churns a gear that drives a belt, sending the floury lemon into the heat of an oven, from which it rises, baked now into a tasty lemon square, up a spiral tube back to the surface, where it is enjoyed by the same two gentlemen, who finish toasting it over a campfire. "I"? As Booker himself would put it, that is so freakin' freakin'.

For good measure, one from the master.