The Art Supplies

Before I "retired" from my job last winter (read:  'stopped working outside the home'), I bought lots of art supplies for my husband and me. I was in a dream world, imagining that we would sit by the water that flows past our small town on the way out to sea, drawing or painting the scenes we beheld there. Sailboats catching the breeze, tankers and cargo ships on their way to or from port, birds congregating on the shore, a train traversing the far shore, that sort of thing. Call me crazy, but I hoped my presence and attention would encourage artistic endeavor and release. Needless to say, my romantic notions were quickly dashed on the rocks by an endless rainy season and quickly deteriorating situation.

Very briefly, my husband showed an interest in watercolor. By this I do not mean panoramas or even abstracts, but stick figures and things. This was fine but didn't last past a couple of sessions, by which time he was playing with getting the colors in the palette set overly wet and mixing them together into blobs, the way a preschooler might play with plasticine modeling clay (which gives me an idea!). It was clear that cleaning up would be my reward, but it was worth a try.

I also purchased an assortment of adult coloring books and good-quality pencils I thought he might enjoy, but it quickly became obvious that the designs were too complicated and confusing, so I bought Curious George, Despicable Me, and other children's activity books. I brought out the crayons. He enjoyed that for several months, but then either lost interest or forgot what he was supposed to be doing and how to do it. He began simply tearing the pages out of the books and "organizing" them instead of coloring them. The children's activities in the books, sorting and mazes and simple dot-to-dots, were a forgotten part of his skill set.

The crayon wrappers were torn off and the crayons broken in pieces. Crayon bits and pencils were placed in his glass, full of water, instead of in the container I had provided. One day, a repair person was in the kitchen, and my husband seized the opportunity to drop all of his coloring pencils in the fresh pitcher of ice water I had prepared.

These developments, as you can imagine, were difficult to accept. Here was a guy who had been a regional manager in a technical field, and he was unable to perform at kindergarten level. Or maybe it's preschool level. I'm a little out of touch with these things.

But color me undeterred. I'm going out to buy a few more coloring projects for him, and I'm going to try a different approach. He needs to fill his time with something other than staring out the window and investigating various noises, real or imagined. If he can, of course. We'll see.