If world leaders had art supplies next to their desks instead of generals, maybe humanity could evolve. My 7-year-old son Bucky recently asked, “May I draw a picture that shows my feelings?”
“Of course,” I answered.
He had been sitting at our kitchen table because I asked him and his older sister Rhapsody to do their homework. Bucky is in the 1st grade. Each night he is supposed to write a mini-story comprised of three to five sentences. But we usually have a 30-minute circular dialogue in which Bucky tells me he doesn’t know what to write about.
Bucky handed me his picture. With a brown marker he drew a table with a person at each end. One person was holding an L-shaped stick. Dots came out of the stick, making a path to the other person, who had a big red splotch.
“What’s this picture about?” I asked Bucky.
He pointed to the red-splotched person. “That’s blood and that’s you,” he said.
My eyes widened and I cringed. “What are you mad at me for?” I asked.
“Homework,” Bucky answered.
“Isn’t your teacher who assigns the work the one to be angry with?” I replied.
Bucky smiled. He returned to his workbook and said, “Help me!”
I answered, “How can I? I’m dead.” All three of us laughed.
I was devastated. When was the next parenting class I had apparently missed to instruct me on how to handle this? I wanted to cry and hide from the horror of my own son wanting to kill me. “Bucky, I’m so glad you can express yourself clearly in a picture,” I said.
I believe in art. I’m an artist and use my pen to express euphoria and horror. I wrote a song “He Broke My Heart I Wish He’d Die,” but I did not sing it for the man who inspired it, even though I wanted to. Bucky’s drawing gave me a sense of how that man might have felt upon hearing it.
A friend of mine directed a film that was well made, yet no one liked to watch it because so much angst was depicted on the screen. When his wife was troubled by it, I told her, “Better that your husband got his frustration out in a film than out on you.”
Being alive is frustrating.
“It’s just paper,” Bucky offered.
He is a boy of few words. His dad died from surgical cancer complications when Bucky was 23 months old. When I was a child, I don’t recall anger management lessons. In my youth I made the misconnection that when rage arrives, a relationship is over, so I rarely expressed it.
At 37, when I became a widow, I discovered art. Now when I feel destructive, I grab a pen and construct a poem, a song or maybe a letter that will never be mailed. Sometimes the creations are either funny or poignant. I share those and it helps others. Sometimes they aren’t. I put those in a book just for me.
A year earlier, Bucky’s kindergarten teacher taught him to draw. When he did something he shouldn’t have done, she would get the markers out. She would ask him to explain his drawing. They would discuss what he could have done differently.
She also told me that in her 25 years of Christian school teaching, boys pretend to use guns and that’s OK. Looking at my paper murder, I did not want to discourage this clear communication tool. I wanted Bucky to trust me with all of his feelings. Trust is earned incrementally.
But should Bucky have that much fury about homework? How do I train him to have appropriate levels of anger? Who decides what’s appropriate?
“Bucky, I know it’s just paper,” I said. “I’m so proud of your clear drawing. You used to grunt or hit when you were angry. This is progress, but I still feel yucky.”
Bucky grabbed another piece of paper and a yellow marker, drew, and then handed me the page. “What is it?” I asked.
“You with a cup of tea,” he said.
“Earl Grey with Half-and-Half in it?”
“Yeah.”
Bucky sat down and finished his homework. The next morning I woke up early and baked him his favorite blueberry muffins. – Kate Kaiser
Kate Kaiser is a frequent contributor. Comments on this piece can be sent to: current@hudsonreporter.com.