Framed-art tour, exhibits 9 & 10

Some time back, Grandboy, 10, went through a bard phase. One of his gems, I hung on the wall. (I’m who cut out the magazine letters and pasted them.) He also gave me a notebook, mostly empty, titled THE INTERESTING BOOK OF POEMS. Here’s one:

A SIMPLE REQUEST

IF YOU KNOW

THAT I KNOW

THE ANSWER TO

A QUESTION

PLEASE

DONT

ASK ME

Were they torturing him at home, bombarding him? Were the questions too asinine? Were the grandparents over here being meanies, picking on him? He got a fine piece out of it, anyway.

Another grandboy, age 9, is still in his objet d’art stage. He lays out his plastic snap-shut palette he towed to Virginia in a toolbox-type carrier and his gazillion brushes and begs, “Paint with me.”

Oh honey. “I can’t paint,” I say. Busybusybusybusybusy. But touching my bottom to the chair, grudgily, I dip into his murked water. He says make the paper wet first. He says he likes the edges ripped, rough. He says his one brush cost such-and-such. He never jeers at my begonia or whatever it is, just observes wisely. Wetter, he says, dabbling audaciously at his, unafraid of the loosey-goosey way the color might run. (Does this count if he’s nine?)

This piece, he left here the other week. He’ll be pleased to see it’s found a wall. The green’s all wrong but exactly right. The puddling is maybe as expert as Julia’s. The outside-the-lines brown, mm mm.