THE WATERCOLOR


I have to remind the boys to lay their new paintings down flat on the table, though I know my wife will be home soon and they will rush to show her and lift up the thick paper and ruin these things they have just made as the paint is drawn to the floor in drips and streaks. This is all you will ever need to know about being a parent. That the paint is never truly set. We tuck them into bed each night, but they are all the while filling in with their own color, streaking and dripping. Every moment the ground is drawing them closer, stretching out their bodies, making them taller, making them smarter, more cynical, more like us and less like themselves. The tears I see are no more than the colors that are not yet dried bleeding outside the fragile lines of their bodies. We do not want to lie down forever. We must risk it, and stand, and run.


Brendan Todt