Purple!

I am in Kindergarten class, with Mrs Kroll. My favorite activities are puzzles (the wooden kinds with like 15 pieces; if i practice a puzzle and then sit with her to show her I can do the puzzle, I get a star, 10 puzzles gets me a bigger gold star) and painting.

Today we can do painting. The usual colors are yellow, blue and red, and sometimes she mixes up some green. It’s poster paint, in Dixie paper cups, on the tray of a large easel with big pieces of paper. Whoever is painting wears a smock, usually an old button down shirt of your dad’s. Each of us brought in our own “smock” which is kept in a special place and has our name on it. Mine is a white button down.  Mrs Kroll says there is a surprise today, she has made some purple by mixing blue and red. I am thrilled. I thrillingly raise my hand when she asks who wants to paint this morning. My friend Anne and I will get to paint first. We each make flowers, tulips, and sing Tip Toe Through the Tulips (by Tiny Tim, who sings on Laugh In). I love doing this.

There’s a sort of bully in the class. His name is Phillip. When kids, Andy and Tom, for example, build walls with the large cardboard blocks, printed to look like multiple bricks, Phillip likes to dramatically knock the walls down, just at the point before the kids stand back to admire their work. He hasn’t done that yet today. When it’s his turn to paint, he is calmer and more focused. Still I feel like part of me still needs to be vigilant and protective of the purple, even while I sit practicing a puzzle, so I have to divide my attention between the two. I still remember both of these feelings, being both thrilled about and protective of the purple.

A few weeks ago I painted a photo from the honeymoon trip I took with my spouse to Newfoundland. We took the photo from a river edge, where there were cobbles colored grey, rose,red, almost purple, and black.  We have some of the rocks still in a special place in our home. For this recent painting, I decided to restrict my palette to not using blue or green. I include the result, which caused a reminder of the purple paint from kindergarten. The image here is an iPhone photo of this recent painting. I don’t think I have the kindergarten painting so you will just have to imagine purple kindergarten style tulips. I only recently became aware that persistent vigilance while doing something fun or even neutral is what I'm doing regularly. I guess I knew this but have a better way to label it now.