A Boy and a Mouse

15 hours ago
2 min read

Three large bronze mice dance in a fountain surrounded by stone walls and flowering greenery.

Do you like to draw? His mom nods. Oh, yeah, he loves to draw.

The little boy is two years old and has been playing in the fountain with the giant mice.

They both had come over to see what I was drawing. The little boy sits down at my table.

I give him paper and three colored pencils: blue, red, and yellow. You know, for color harmony. Can't go wrong. The kid's going to come up with something. Three colored pencils and one of my fancy felt-tip pens. I keep an eye on the felt-tip pen.

Do you want to draw? Do you want to draw the mouse?

He looks over at the mouse in the fountain and doesn’t move a muscle. Mom points at the page. Where would the head be? He stares blankly at the paper.

My turn. Okay, when you look at that mouse, how does that make you feel? He looks right at me. Does it make you happy? Draw happy. Draw smile.

And the kid picks up a colored pencil and just goes to town making marks. All three colored pencils, and the felt-tip pen too. After a few minutes, I reach in to rescue my nice blue felt-tip pen before it gets flattened. And I see it.

A child’s blue, yellow, and red drawing of a mouse shares a page with an artist’s charcoal drawing of the bronze mice fountain.

His drawing. There’s a mouse in it!

Swear to god. It has the two feet. It has the tail. It has the underline for the chin line and the beginnings of the right ear! Even a leg with the foot raised. It’s all in the blue marker over the blue, yellow, and red pencil marks. His mom sees it too.

I love this. May I keep it? I’d like to do something with this. We exchange mobile numbers, and I promise to send her whatever comes of it.

At home, it took very little to bring out the mouse. A few added lines and a little shading. I compared his drawing to mine and was blown away again. He’d captured one of the sparrows playing in the fountain too. Only needed the beak.

A work of art.

The next day in my studio, I arranged our mice drawings in my illustrated journal. On the opposite page was a piece of used palette paper, my stand-in for an irritation I’d been carrying. The paint blobs suggested a tyrant throwing his weight around and kicking up dust.

That’s when I saw it: this tyrant was lifting his foot in the same gesture as the mouse in my drawing. Nothing to do but laugh. The day before had started as one thing, ended as another.

When I look at this page in my journal now, I think of the little boy who drew “happy” and found the mouse. And of me, who drew “irritation” and found the mouse in a tyrant.

Two child drawings displayed on a refrigerator, including a portrait with bold dark eyebrows.

P.S. The little boy has kept drawing. And his portraits are coming along beautifully. I mean, look at those eyebrows. You see them too, right?

Comments

A Boy and a Mouse

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