It was a day that I didn’t feel like painting.

Most days I don’t feel like painting.

I had Things To Do when the five-year-old brought forth her query.

Things.

“Will you paint with Me?”

THINGS

TO DO.

I am not an artist.

 My hands, my mind–they are so far removed from such activity that I simply thought and said:

No, no I don’t want to paint. You paint.

And besides, I had no idea of:

What to paint.

I fear there was fear behind this fear.

Seriously?

Painting with my preschooler!

But

These

Things.

Thankfully, my heart said yes.

And so I did.

Contiguous streams of happy chatter flowed from her rosebud lips:

Ohh, I love that!

What is that?

I really like how you did that flower.

An occasional,

Oops!

Oh no! I messed up.

Then carrying on with sheer delight.

I was amazed when I made up my mind and heart to sit,

to sit and let go of the Things, that everything just flowed.

From the deliberateness of my choosing colors

to thoughts of spring–

 still fairly far removed in my arctic world,

 then on to the beauties of summer.

The ease of my brush strokes across the paper:

mixing, blending, combining into No, no not a Van Gogh to be sure,

but a Marie.

Let’s paint another one together!

said the five-year-old.

And so we did.

When it looked as though our masterpiece was complete she exclaimed,

“We can even paint a rainbow!”

 Atop our  swirls of clouds and sky,

 sandwiched between the edge of the paper

and our free-flowing tree and flower designs

we put forth turquoise, fuchsia, pink, yellow, lime green, and scarlet:

a glorious rainbow indeed.

Now let’s sign it Mom and Me.

And so we did.