I was restless on my metal folding chair. I was seated on one of the two chairs scooted up to a long empty banquet table, which was masquerading as a desk. The other chair was empty.
It was one of those mostly adult events where we take ourselves quite seriously. I was waiting to be called into service when Sarah, who had been wise enough to bring along her coloring book and a fully loaded activity box, approached me.
“Would you like to color?” she asked. Eight-year-old Sarah wore a lavender T-shirt and blue jeans. With her long fiery red hair and beautiful matching freckles, she personified the box of crayons she carried. I was pleased to be asked. “I would love to,” I said.
Sarah settled herself into the chair opposite me. With great ceremony she set down and opened her red plastic activity box. She took out and opened the box of crayons, then set them between us on the table. Next, she began to thumb through her coloring book. Following some deliberation, she selected three pages. Then she carefully tore them out of her book and placed them in front of me.
“I want you to have these; they are my favorites,” she said. I was still recovering from a mastectomy for breast cancer just weeks before. Perhaps Sarah knew; she had given me her best pictures to color. She then selected her own pages to color.
Sarah watched me select the page I would color first. It was a woman hanging clothes on an outdoor clothesline. The woman’s long hair, which cascaded from under her scarf, reached her waist. Her striped stockings and slippers poked out from under her long full dress s. Her apron was long and frilly. A full laundry basket was on the grass next to her.
My fingers poised over the crayons, I began to make my selection. Sarah spoke up. “You don’t have to use that color,” she said, pointing to my pink crayon. Realizing I needed a coach, she said, “Choose another color for her face.” I looked through the crayons again and selected burnt sienna. My coach nodded approvingly.
We both began to color. We discussed ethnic diversity and we talked about beauty. When I started to use the same crayon for the woman’s arm, my coach again intervened. “Why not another color, like magenta?” she suggested. Yes, why not? And when I finished coloring the right arm, I chose teal for the left. Sarah and I exchanged smiles; I was learning.
We colored. “It isn’t so much the picture you’re given, it’s how you color the picture,” I was told. Coloring techniques differ. We discussed outlining versus free form, side to side strokes, or swirls. We also talked about the pros and cons of having big brothers, and about best friends. We talked about the death of a family pet, and friends who had died and how much we missed them. We giggled over “knock-knock” jokes, some old and some original to the moment.
I selected orchid for the lady’s hair and continued coloring. “You are doing a good job,” Sarah told me. I glowed from the compliment. If everyone in the world could gather at a very long table on which a variety of coloring books and several boxes of crayons were set out, perhaps Sarah’s point of view would catch on.
I studied the page I was coloring. My rainbow lady, with her magenta arm, her teal arm, her burnt sienna face, and her orchid hair, was smiling. She was now dressed in multicolored clothing and was standing on an unlikely shade of violet-blue grass. I was pleased.
As I prepared to leave, Sarah took her folder with pockets on each side, carefully tore it down the middle, and asked, “How do you spell ‘Karen’”? I told her and she printed, “To Karen, from Sarah” on each of the three pictures she had colored. Then she slipped them into my half of the folder. Next, she opened her activity box and selected 12 stickers from her collection. Each sticker proclaimed affirmation in such forms as a colorful comet trailing the message, ”SUPER KID”, and a rainbow whose base read, “MATH WIZ.” With solemn generosity, Sarah slipped them into the pocket. Lastly, she took one of her new pencil erasers and drew a smiling face on it. From her activity box, she pulled out her Scotch tape and carefully taped the smiling eraser to the top of my half-folder. “You colored very well,” she told me as she handed me my half-folder. “Thank you,” I said.
I never take conversations over a coloring book lightly. When you’re finished with the mulberry, I’ll trade you my aquamarine.