Out of sheer desperation I picked up the in-flight magazine, you know one of those glossy periodicals devoted to promoting the joys of travel. Since I have never enjoyed reading fiction I was about to return it to the seat-back pocket but I saw an article about a group of mothers in Atlanta who have formed a group whose stated goal is to bring out the “artist that is inside each child.”
It was a long article but in the third or fourth paragraph I read a quote from one of the groups founders who said that parents have a “moral obligation to nurture the innate creativity” of their children and I stopped reading right then: I knew immediately that there was nothing in that article that applied to me. Then I chuckled, thinking how my Mother would have disagreed with that entire thesis. Strongly.
My mother was the pragmatic depression-era daughter of humorless Eastern European immigrants and “nurturing creativity” was not on her short list of vital parenting skills. I clearly remember coming home from kindergarten one day with a drawing I had made of my whole family standing in front of the house. The drawing was of 8 stick figures standing in front of a square “house” surrounded by lollipop trees.
“Very nice,” said my mother, unceremoniously placing put the drawing on top of the pile of newspapers scheduled to be thrown out that day.
I was offended. “Bobby’s mother puts his pictures on the refrigerator,” I protested.
Mom did not miss a beat. “Does Bobby’s mother make cookies like these? “ she said, offering me a plate of warm oatmeal raisin cookies, and thus was I successfully distracted.
Throughout my grade school career, I must have been distracted often, because none of my drawings ever made it to the refrigerator; the construction paper chains I made at Christmas never adorned the tree and when the rest of the class painted with water colors I was sent to the library to read because my mother sent a note to Miss Hancock that I was not allowed to paint anymore because I ruined too many of my school shirts.
But the article got me thinking and I began to wonder if my life would have been fundamentally different if my mom had nurtured my innate creativity. Would I be one of those guys who could paint a mural on the dining room wall? Would I be inspired to create a marble mosaic on the floor of my kitchen? Build a scale-model replica of the Eiffel Tower from popsicle sticks? Sighing, I realized I’ll never know, and then buried the thought..
The thought stayed buried for several weeks but came back to the surface recently when my old friend Robert came to a dinner party at my house. Robert and I were good friends in college but now only see each other once or twice a year – if that. But we have a shared history and make the effort to stay in touch.
It’s obvious that Robert’s mother encouraged his artistic nature, and when we were in college he thought of himself as a frustrated artist. Now in his mid-50’s he still has a strong artistic impulse but not even a hint of talent. Over the years Robert has gifted me with samples of his work: An unnerving portrait of a sad-eyed clown painted in pastels; a pottery bowl that looks like a bedpan; a bouquet of “flowers” made from Diet Coke cans; a knitted sweater that resembled a straightjacket. Worse yet, when my partner and I moved into our new house Robert gave us a picture frame that is bordered by some kind of dark, frizzy fringe that everyone agrees looks like pubic hair.
After Robert gave us the frame we stopped inviting him over for fear he might ask why it was not displayed but last week when he came for dinner to see a mutual friend the picture frame, thankfully, was not on his mind. Now, he walked into the house and handed me a compact disc.
“I’ve recorded some of my favorite songs for you,” he said grandly. “You’ll love them. “ I looked at the cover of the CD: A picture of Robert in his skinny jeans perkily perched atop a grand piano. I gulped; his “skinny jeans” phase was easily thirty years and 60 pounds ago. My partner took one look at the CD and fled, leaving me to deal with Robert.
“Very nice!” I said, with an enthusiasm I did not feel. “Really. Nice.”
Robert insisted I play the CD right then and there, and unwillingly I complied. The first song was a sultry rendition of “Fever” followed by an up-tempo version of “Them There Eyes.” Robert’s arrangements featured lots of long, drawn-out final notes and a good bit of wailing. It sounded, as one of my other guests pointed out later, like Barney the Dinosaur doing an impression of Yoko Ono.
One by one the other guests escaped to the relative quiet of the patio. I had no idea where my partner was; I subsequently learned he had locked himself in his car with the dog and a bottle of Pinot Noir.
By the time we got to “Body and Soul” Robert, eyes closed, was swaying to the music and I was wishing I was dead. The last song on the CD was a disconcerting mash-up of “My Man,” “You’re the Top” and “The Man That Got Away.” Since Robert had serenaded himself into a trance-like state I escaped to the patio too. As I walked out and closed the kitchen door firmly behind me, my friend Rob came by. “That is one hot mess,” he said and I nodded grimly.
That’s when I suddenly remembered that once, when Mom was very old, I asked her why she never displayed any of my drawings on the refrigerator.
“Simple,” she said matter-of –factly. “You weren’t very good. I didn’t want to set you up for failure and ridicule. “
“I did you a favor,” she said with total certainty and listening to Robert’s wailing in the background, I wished his mother had done him the same favor.
.”