Feb 22 2008
Fingerpainting
Rather than spend this post whining about the fact that my long-awaited Birthday Sail plans have been put out of commission by another long stretch of rain and storms, I decided to go back and catch up on some of the material I’d collected over the warmer, sunnier, kinder days.
For boat kids, life is an exercise in being compact. Their stuff fits in smaller spaces, there’s less stuff overall, and when they play, they tend to have smaller spaces to do it in. One day last September, on one of those classic Californian Indian Summer days, we fingerpainted. And we did it big.
My pal Heidi had given me a recipe for making fingerpaints; flour, water, coloring of some kind. We chose Kool-Aid, because it smells nice while you’re painting, and nice while it’s drying too. We pulled out a huge assortment of bowls, I mixed the paste goo, and the boys mixed the color in. We then spread out along the dock, at the side of the boat, which is actually just a great big canvas waiting for art.
The boys did abstracts, they did concrete images (faces, hearts, stars). Kestrel got thoroughly distracted by the feel of the goo, and coated himself in it.
Despite taking the whole thing more seriously, as an artistic endeavor, (naturally), Rowan was pretty patient with Kestrel’s incursion into his creative space. Eventually, Kestrel gave up any semblance of painting the boat, and started painting himself, the dock, and his brother. By the time he was done, both boys were coated in multicolor fruit-scented rapidly-drying fingerpaint madness.
It says something about the marina we’re in that about that time the maintenance guy dinghied by, and was more amused than horrified, although I’m sure some snarly thoughts must have crossed his mind. But the added bonus, from the parental viewpoint, is how totally easy this was to clean up. All the bowls went into a rubbermaid tote to soak, and the dock got blasted with the pressure nozzle on the hose. Both boys went into bathtub totes of their own, with popsicles, to encourage longer soaking.
We left the artwork on the side of the boat until it crumbled off in the dew and the sunshine, over a few days. And I kept finding people making excuses to walk down the dock and check it out. At first I was bracing for complaints, but it turns out that most of the folks in the marina were mostly just surprised and intrigued by the idea of boats as canvas for creative endeavor. And once the fingerpaint had crumbled to the point of being yucky, we washed it away entirely, and I felt a little sad, like when the Buddhist monks begin to brush away their sand mandalas. We’ll be fingerpainting again when the weather warms up, but the boys will be older, it’ll be different artwork, and things will no doubt have changed. I suppose it’s time to get used to that.
That’s just tooooooo cool. Love the pictures of the boys
Hmm. I’m assuming the boat was waxed prior to this adventure. If you don’t mind my nipping the idea, this sounds like a brilliant way to celebrate cutting the lines this spring and I think I’ll borrow it. We’re having an Open Boat party. Like a cast, I think I’d like to set out finger paints and have folks sign our boat to see us off. We can let it fade over the following few weeks, but it would be a great reminder of the encouragement and enthusiasm we’re leaving land-side.
Your site is so helpful. We have three boys, 6,4,3, and a baby girl. We are looking at buying a Lagoon 42 located in St. Maarten. And we live in San Diego, so we face many similar issues in terms of refit, finance, adaptation, and decluttering. I especially liked seeing the stateroom refit, and the bin as bath, because it gives me a better sense of reality. Thanks.
I love this! Wish we’d thought of it for the Zombie Princess. This should be an article in a sailing magazine to help blow the stuffiness out of the “old salt” mentality!
This is an especially beautiful essay. I mean, apart from the sheer coolness of it all. It evolves beautifully and the denoument is utterly right. And I love the pictures, too. But I love your kids so madly I can’t tell if it’s because they’re good & apt photos, or if it’s because they’re of R and K.
I just realized I’m starting to think again about having kids myself. Good heavens, woman, what will you do to me next?!? ;))