On Sunday, a woman trying to raise money to help offset her
daughter’s college tuition sold an old painting that she inherited
from her grandmother.
On Sunday, a woman trying to raise money to help offset her daughter’s college tuition sold an old painting that she inherited from her grandmother.
Hoping to collect a few thousand dollars, she was shocked when the painting brought in more than $600,000. Beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder – or investor, as the case may be.
This week, after tucking my sons into bed after they battled valiantly to delay that process, I looked at a finger painting that hangs on their bedroom wall and I shook my head.
I was not taken aback by the abstract nature of the image, which is a mish-mash of colors and shapes and what appears to be letters spelling my oldest son’s name, but by the fact that the young artist who created this work has since traded his abstractionist palette for a realist’s one.
Young elementary school kids come home with art projects all the time. I’ve got my pens and pencils in a decorated frozen orange juice can; a picture of my youngest son is framed by Popsicle sticks and is stuck to the fridge by a magnet; and more than a third of our Christmas ornaments were created in the classroom.
These creations have no value to anyone outside of my family. To others, these objects are idle, childish, whimsical pieces that wouldn’t get a second look. To parents, however, the works of our children are masterpieces, time capsules, treasured memories.
If I put one of those drawings on Ebay, it probably would earn me enough money to buy a new pencil for my frozen orange juice can.
The scholastic/artistic period in a child’s life is brief. That is not to say that they lose their creative ability as they get older; it’s just that their abilities are channeled to other tasks as time wears on. Finger-painting projects are replaced by book reports; arts and crafts projects become Web searches.
Like many parents, my wife and I have done our best to save our children’s masterworks in a box that we’ll probably open when our kids go off to college.
“They were so innocent,” we’ll say. “Look how cute this … eagle? spaceship? cucumber? … is.”
Our collection includes the requisite drawings and crafts, but it also includes messages and notes, which are a wonderful reflection on days gone by.
One of my favorite notes is “Mom, he’s calling me an idiotic bird.” This was written by my younger son about his older brother a few years ago. I don’t recall the circumstances, but obviously the younger brother wanted to get the older brother busted through subtlety.
I appreciated that, but it was a significant challenge not to laugh with mystification at both the creative name-calling of my older son (which officially I whole-heartedly discourage) and the undercover means by which the younger one turned in his brother.
We did the right thing at the time and reminded our older son that it is not appropriate to call people names while telling the younger one that his brother’s words do not define what type of person – or creature – he is.
This note is stored in our plastic vault of priceless memories, packed in with report cards, certificates of achievement, and photos.
They are worth absolutely nothing to the outside world – at least until or unless my sons get famous and they want to write in their memoirs about what doting and supportive parents they had.
Make me an offer on this box and I’ll turn you down, for no price can be placed on the value of memories, you idiotic bird.
Adam Breen teaches journalism and yearbook at San Benito High School. He is former editor of The Free Lance.
