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...
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“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

When April gives way to May...

...our April-born girl will be in another part of the country, in the hot lowlands playing in a shallow pool filled with water from the garden hose with cousins Max and little Jared and shy LJ, our help's three-year old kid in Pasig, for company.

When Kai/Butones dressed up to get ready to leave for a long-postponed trip to the lowlands yesterday, I asked her who she wanted to see at my mother's house. "Max, Jared and LJ," she said. There was absolutely no mention of the family elders. Children say the darndest thing. When needy me asked if she'd miss me, she said, "No. We've been together too long."

Well, that put Booboo in her place, and I've been filling up the space left by her absence with nothing but work, readings and music in that order. But the music I miss most is her playing her xylophone by my side while I work, her calling out for me to sing every note she picks out on that do-re-mi scale. "Sing it, Booboo," my little bossing commands. And I have no recourse but to stop whatever it is I'm in the midst of, and I sing, often off-key, and she turns to me with a frown.

Before she, her mother Kimi and Granny Suzy left, we had time for a few pictures that I wish I can use for my passport photo, but fat chance in hell will the Department of Foreign Affairs allow any of these. These are my souvenirs for April of 2015. Ahhh, Kai, you are the sunshine and moonlight in my life!

The Wee One as resident percussionist Photo by Booboo Babeth

Our demure look

Our smiles

Our range of facial expressions. She's better at it.

Our sleepy look

Our..."whatever", another favorite expression of hers Photos by my indulgent daughter and Kai's Mamay Kimi

Living together, working together

"Every artist dips their brush in their own soul and paints their own nature in their pictures." - Henry Ward Beecher

I share the same birthday as the American clergyman and social reformer Henry Ward Beecher, but that's just a coincidence. I fully agree with him though on how painting can be a kind of soul work. Maybe it's why I stayed away from it for close to two years, not that I didn't tend to my soul during that period. I'd hold my brushes now and then or check on my paints, especially the acrylics, to ensure that they had not yet hardened. Meanwhile, my brother who lives in Canada gifted me with bottles of metallic paints on his last visit here last year. Those things cost an arm and a leg in the local art supplies stores.

Fourteen days ago, I began a work while I was at my Mom's in the lowlands. Restless soul that I am, I was at wit's end when the Wifi went on the blink. I used up the time to begin painting again.

I decided to bring up all my art materials to Baguio after the last day of classes in the little school where I teach. I thought I'd find the time, finally, after all the excuses I've given myself on why that visually expressive side of me remained "asleep". Too many papers to edit, too many projects to get off the ground, too many books to read apart from writing deadlines. Ho hum. Indeed.

Early today, I saw my grandchild, who just turned four two days ago, working with her colors on her own little sketchpad. She was a picture of concentration. After she finished one sheet, she colored another. And there was this enviable casual expression on her face.

That did it. I brought out my unfinished painting and worked from after lunch until the light started to fade. I didn't stop until I was satisfied. Meanwhile The Wee One joined in, trying her hand with my acrylics while I reminded her to use up her washable colors first before she tried my preferred media. I must say she was pretty obedient. She'd even give me suggestions, e.g., "Wouldn't it be nice if you also put faces on your flowers the way you put a face on the sun?" Had I listened to her, it would mean I'm such a pushover!

Thanks, Kai, let's do it again sometime.

Filling in the blanks and somehow getting somewhere

Kai brings out her own painting stuff, stubbornly refusing to look up to my camera as she does her own thing.

Wielding a grownup's brush. Beats me in terms of self-confidence.

Rolly, our critic-in-residence (a.k.a. heckler) with his usual prop, a bottle of San Mig Lite

My last touch: a thin, watery coating of deep gold paint. And now to think of an apt title.

Photos by Booboo Babeth

Momentarily still

"Wake me up when the sun is here na, ha?" That request has been made almost nightly when The Wee One, I think, was able to figure out that with sunrise comes getting up and getting ready for nursery school. We've had to put aside our dark glasses and hats until the weekend when we resume our morning walks. I can think of no more poetic line than her utterance. It brought to mind this compilation of meditative essays, The Other Walk, by Sven Birkerts, wherein he opens his book with these words: "This morning, going against all conventions, I turned right instead of left...Still, going against the grain of my usual track, seeing every single thing from the other side, was suddenly welcome." We'll try that other track, hopefully without hidden dangers or surprises.

Interrupted walk

My three-year-old walking companion, a.k.a. The Wee One, and I often pause at this spot and try to be very still. It's where the butterflies from the neighborhood gather, without fail, on sunny mornings.

A week went by without a post, and I shan't detail what went on before--too inconsequential for my precious few readers to bother. They're better listed down in a private journal.

If my walks have been temporarily halted along with the photo documentation, it's because of a sudden flareup of rashes around my neck and upper chest. I felt the itch climb up, tiny rosary beads caused a swelling on my right cheek. The lid of my right eye grew heavy from the swelling. Nope, it wasn't something I ate. There's an animistic, less empirical side of me that failed to acknowledge some spirits dwelling on unused stone steps with heavy, untrimmed vegetation and flora along both sides. I chose to take that path less well taken and paid heavily for it. The Wee One was somehow protected by her fleet feet and the insect repellent lotion that her grandaunt rubbed on her exposed skin before we ventured out.

"Tabi tabi po. Makikiraan po." These are the traditional words that I should have spoken out loud as I climbed down those steps. The Wee One was light on her feet and took the steps quickly without a pause even if I tried to sound stern with my "Carefully! Carefully!" The experience has taught me to be more careful and mindful. At the same time, I'm grateful she was spared the discomfort.

I know better now. I won't dampen our combined spirit of exploration, but we'll be both armed next time with protected skin, prayers and our ancestors' incantations. These will save me another trip to the doctor and three days spent indoors waiting for the rashes to disappear with help from antihistamines. Meanwhile, I continue to just breathe.

Because of her size (she's closer to the earth), The Wee One is the first to always catch a spectacle. Then she issues a command: "Look, Booboo! Isn't that beautiful? Take a picture!"

My fearless guide to Life Photos by Booboo Babeth