mrs. johnson

Mrs. Johnson* was my elementary school art teacher. And she was one of those teachers who would erase half of your picture and then redraw it for you. There was no, “This is a great start. Have you thought about trying this or that to make it more realistic?” Nope. It was all eraser and sighing and muttering. It didn’t take long for me to figure out two things. 1) I wasn’t good at art. 2) It didn’t matter because Mrs. Johnson would do my work for me.  But in junior high, my art teacher expected me to do my own work. I had long ago surrendered myself to Mrs. Johnson’s opinion of me and I was unable to suddenly convince myself that I was capable of drawing a picture. After 8^th grade, I never took another art class again.

And now I have this little boy who loves crafts and coloring and creating. He is constantly asking me to draw things for him. Today it was a sea serpent eating a fish. And as I attempt to create these things for him, I find myself qualifying it. Telling him that I can’t draw well or that maybe he should ask his daddy because he would do a better job. It’s the truth. The truth that was taught to me by Mrs. Johnson. But if art is subjective then that was just her opinion. That was the truth of my abilities as she saw it. I’m not saying that I could have been a great artist if I had only been nurtured. I have no illusions about the fact that God didn’t bless me with those abilities. But maybe I would have been more willing to try. Maybe I would have been better able to accept my failings with grace rather than with embarrassment.

 And the real truth is that my son has no idea that I can’t draw. So why do I feel the need to tell him? Why am I qualifying my work to my four-year old? Old habits die hard but that isn’t what I want to teach my boy. I want him to be able to say that he did his best and to be proud of the effort he put in even if his picture doesn’t look like everyone else’s. And when he meets his Mrs. Johnson, I want him to be able to take his picture back and say, “No thanks. I like it the way it is.”

*Name has been changed mostly because I can't remember it.