Four and a day forever

Before she grows too fast (and she is doing so each day), I'm posting photos of Ms. Curly Tops Kai during the summer of her fourth year. What I like about her is she never complains of boredom or maybe hasn't felt what ennui is. There is always something to be done either with her toys or with her immediate world. She can observe her shadow or watch a bee buzzing close to a flower or balance herself on the walkway around the community pond. In a few months she will be five and will move on to other activities. For as long as these pictures are here, she is four in my eyes.

Photos by Babeth Lolarga

Small beginnings

I like receiving blank notebooks. I get them on all occasions, sometimes more than I need so I feel a need to dole them out in order not to feel overwhelmed at the prospect of words that must be composed to fill them up. I received a lime green leatherette notebook from Melen Araos early last year, and I envisioned it to be my doodle book (that's still apart from a diary). But guess who took to it naturally? Kai alias Curly tops curled her lines this way and that using her markers with a freedom a creative mind enjoys. I don't know the story behind the biblical verse that I wrote underneath, but the words are worth repeating.

"Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin..." - Zechariah 4:10

There are oodles of Kai's doodles, and I'm thinking, with my interest in all manner of journaling, of keeping one for the Scripture. Here's to small beginnings while 2016 is fresh.

Guess who's always in the moment?

The ailing teacher Thich Nhat Hanh (get well soon, please) wrote once, "Life can only be found in the present moment."

This morning my youngest sibling felt unwell. It turned out that her BP was at an all-time high of 170/100. I couldn't resist having my own blood pressure monitored since the automatic reader was out already. Mine read 130/80. Pang-dalaga! Throughout all this, curious curly-haired Kai observed with eyes growing wider.

To make her not worry while we fussed over our signs of mortality, sis and I alternated in asking her, "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

Booboo: "Do you wanna be a doctor?"

Kai: "No."

Mamita Gigi: "A nurse?"

Kai: "No."

Booboo: "A teacher like Granny Su?"

Kai: "No."

Mamita Gigi: "But you have to be doing something when you're grown up."

Booboo: "How about street sweeper? You go places."

Kai: "No."

Finally, Mamita Gigi and I said, almost as one, "So what do you wanna be?"

Kai: "A person!"

Booboo: "What are you gonna do as a person?"

Kai: "I'll play with blocks."

She smiled at us and walked away.

Mamita and Booboo looked at each other wordlessly. But our look must have read, "She got us there. And once again she's right."

Selfie shoe-fie by Kai Fernandez

Coloring is for all

This “Peter Pan market” has roots in publishing, beyond coloring books (the growth in sales of children’s and young-adult books to much older readers has been well documented), but it is far from confined to that arena.

Summer camps for adults, for example, have also gone from curiosity to viable enterprise. Following a near-death experience, Fidget Wigglesworth (birth name: Levi Felix), then the vice-president of a successful dot-com, turned off his phone and went backpacking for two and a half years with his partner, Brooke Dean; when they returned, in 2012, they founded Camp Grounded, a “Digital Detox” experience for which campers relinquish their electronic devices and engage instead in stargazing and sing-alongs...
...
“Coloring is so accessible,” she told me. “It unleashes the creativity we all have in a way that’s quite safe.” - Adrienne Raphel, "Why Adults Are Buying Coloring Books (for Themselves)" found in today's www.newyorker.com

Kimi's "book" and her tentative strokes

By coincidence, my eldest child Kimi (no longer a child, really, she's 30) Kimi came home a few hours ago from National Bookstore with something that would "chillax" her from her online work: a coloring book. Her fear is she might get addicted to coloring books and not get any official work finished. Nah, Kimi has a Kai to support so she has to balance work and play.

Curly Kai wasn't going to be outdone. I pulled out a "spoiled" rubbercut print that I had done when I went to art school at the University of the Philippines Baguio and a tin box full of broken or used oil pastels and pencils, still not all dried up (keep 'em sealed always). One of our electives in the Fine Arts program was printmaking (then taught by Manolo Sicat).

Like I wrote in an earlier blog, I like partnering with Kai--this time I gave the given (not a blank canvas paper as I did over a month ago) and it's her turn to fill up the places and spaces with colors.

When I left her less than 30 minutes ago, she was still at it.

God bless James Barrie's eternal boy Peter Pan and whoever invented the adult coloring book. Also grandmas who don't immediately throw old works away. My rubbercut that has lemons and strawberries for its subject now has a life of its own, and it isn't wholly mine but Kai's, too.

Our curly-haired colorist giving life to an old black and white print Photos by Babeth Lolarga

Partnering

When your collaborator is a four-year-old kid, expect pleasantness in an activity you both aren't rewarded to do. That's how Kai of the Curly Tops and I found ourselves on the afternoon of her Mamay Kimi's birthday working with paint, paper, canvas.

She has freely painted several abstracts weeks ago and put them aside when she discovered it was just as fun to cut old notebooks or doodle human figures, odds and ends, or sound out the names of the people and pets she lives with to practice the writing of words. Most times though, the ruled notebooks feature gibberish--clusters of consonants with a number at the end like "Wqwk Fhjjufjheybvjhfjkfhj...6."

After I was done with my so-called mixed media work called "It is only a paper moon / Sailing over a cardboard sea", I looked for Kai's old works, leafed through her doodle book, then enlarged her figures with a pencil, copying as accurately as possible the way she shaped faces, eyeglasses, stick-like arms and feet, flowers, etc., then I used her abstracts as background for the, uh, creative collaboration before finally outlining the figures in black. These exercises felt more fun because my own work left me a teeny-weeny unsatisfied. Calls for retouching tomorrow

When she saw what I had done, she first had this doubtful expression on her face, then showed the works to her mother and told her Grumpa Tats to have these framed.

I trust her instinctive moves so inevitably I asked if she could help me with the background for the work I intend to do tomorrow. I explained to her I needed daytime sky, green and orange below that sky. The figures I will pencil in after I implant a dream tonight. Meanwhile, Curly Kai dived into the activity like a pro.

Okay, Teacher Kai, you can relax tomorrow while I figure something out of the beauty you had created. In fact, your biased mother said it's already a stand-alone work, and I needn't touch it even. Touché!