How the Little People Help

The call comes in the other day that my dad doesn’t have long. Two weeks? One? Not much. We knew this was coming, but now it’s coming fast—as quickly as his cancerous blood can empty out its oxygen and he can fade into those final moments in this body on this earth.

But I don’t feel too quick and fast after the call. I feel like a big slug, moving slowly around my house, with my thoughts clunking through the rooms in my brain, my expression dripping down my face. What to do now? Pack? What to take? What to think right now? I slump around for a while.

Until the phone rings again. It’s my neighbor this time. He needs a little help if I can give it, please. Can I watch his seven-year-old daughter Trisha for a little while, starting in a few minutes? I haven’t brushed my teeth for the day, but sure. I’d do anything for them. Bring her over. I love their kids one thousand to the thousandth power. (That’s big math.)

I’m yanking on my socks when they knock on the front door. I run down the stairs as Trisha steps into my kitchen and immediately takes off her mini size sneakers right inside the door. As soon as I see her little girl face with her little girl clothes on, and her shiny little girl haircut, my heart melts. She is exactly what I need. I wave her dad goodbye. He is profusely thanking me, but I already can see this is the opposite scenario: I need to be thanking him.

“Shall we paint?” I ask her. She nods her head promptly.

“Yup. I’m going to paint The Starry Night,” she announces.

“Oh? That sounds lovely. Let me go get all the stuff.”

Trisha is one of the four kids I ‘taught’ art to in my driveway during the pandemic. (I wrote a blog tutorial of sorts about it.) She and the other three know the score. Now they all help me set up the materials like art teachers themselves. I love that part of the class, watching the kids having now grown into experts placing the painting items just so, talking art like professionals, surmising what will transpire as if they’re philosophers of life and aesthetics. Truly, what else is more beautiful?

“Do you know what The Starry Night looks like?” I ask, pulling out small paint bottles from the Art Class box.

“Not really.”

“Do you want to see a picture?”

Yes, she does. I pull up Van Gogh’s painting on my phone and prop it up in front of her impromptu studio at my kitchen counter. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” She nods her head, looking at it closely.

“I think I’m going to need black, white, and some pink,” she tells me, even though none of those colors seem to appear in the image on my phone.

“Coming right up.”

We putter around in front of our growing mess on my counter. Slowly, not one but two paintings emerge from the countertop while I work next to her on the organizing project I’d been trying to finish before I leave for NJ to see my dad.

“Would you vote for me if I run for President?” she asks me out of the blue. I’m taken aback because it seems like a long time until that might be possible for her, but I kick into gear. I figure if she’s already working out these kinds of contingencies, I might apply myself to the project, too.

“Vote for you?” I ask incredulously. “I’ll not only vote for you. I’ll work on your campaign!” She cracks a big smile and starts to giggle. I don’t even know if she knows what a campaign is, but the way I deal with kids is as if they’re my small friends. I find it works like a charm when you’re trying to show them they have credence even at an early age. Besides, they are my small friends.

“If you want, I’ll give stump speeches for you. This is what I’ll say: Folks, I know you all know Trisha is an effective leader and has accomplished great things, but I’m here to tell you about Trisha The Person. I’ve known her since she was a young girl, and let me tell you, she’s the real deal. I promise she cares about each one of you because she has a huge—” and then I put my fingers together into a heart shape. “Heart.”

She blushes and smiles, and I giggle and smile back, and this is the moment I discover that she has singlehandedly pulled me out of my sluggish sorrow and into a reverie of happy companionship. She is my dear comfort sitting there with a small paint brush in her hand and a goofy joy on her face. Then I realize I better make sure she doesn’t get paint all over those clothes, so I grab my roomy apron to tie around her waist like a tent around a bug. We’re taking care of each other.

We hum along, shooting the breeze in my kitchen, drinking Limeade, our new favorite drink we decide.

“Mmm. Tasty.”

“Delicioso.”

She tells me about how Louie Armstrong invented scat. Between her and her brother, I don’t know how they learn all these obscure things.

“Do you want to hear my favorite Louie Armstrong song?” I ask her. I pull up What a Wonderful World on my phone and start singing along with him.

I see trees of green, red roses too I see them bloom for me and you And I think to myself what a wonderful world.

“I’ve heard this song before,” she realizes aloud.

“I’m sure you have. It’s very famous. Hey. Do you want a snack or something?”

She shrugs. “Sure.”

So, we go look through my pantry. I ask about this food or this food, and she stays quiet. I show her a granola bar.

“Oh, those,” she says, looking up at me. “As soon as you gave me one of those in art class, I became obsessed with them.”

I giggle inside. This means she likes them. It’s a linguistic melodrama I will be sad to see replaced with a teenage stoicism one day, and it will happen. For now, I know to enjoy it and play along.

“Obsessed? I’m obsessed too, but not for the same reason. The other day I swallowed a granola bar whole without chewing and it got stuck in my throat sideways.” I make my voice scratchy. “You see this big rectangle?” I point at my throat and try to accentuate the rectangle that exists only in my imagination.

She scrutinizes my neck for a brief second, then purses her lips, rolls her eyes, and gives me a look like, get outta town. We traipse back into the kitchen. Our time together today will eventually run out. I don’t want her to go. I keep looking at her tiny pink sneakers by the front door. I remember when my kids had shoes that size. Now their shoes are enormous and come in ho-hum colors. I don’t prefer one size over the other, or any color. I only prefer that there are shoes sitting by the front door. When there aren’t shoes and the person is passed, they’ll not walk around in your life again.

But there are the memories, Steph. I press my toes into the ends of my slippers. True, true.

At this point, Trisha starts to gather up her things to head back home. Our time is up. We look at her paintings. I ask a couple questions about what’s going on in the images and why she painted it the way she did. She explains the color scheme and her favorite spots on the canvas. “This is a lovely version of The Starry Night, Trisha.” She looks up at me with an open face and then a grin of pride spreads.

For a moment I think about how many people have loved Van Gogh’s painting despite its creation at a time of great pain for him. Beauty, joy, pain, sorrow. We interconnect with each other over these. Life’s lattice work.

I load up a bag for Trisha with the rocks I’m giving her from my organizing project, the extra granola bars with instructions to be sure to chew, and the finished works of art. She pushes her feet into her shoes and off she goes.

“Bye!”

“See ya!”

I close the door and go back to my previous reality. There’s so much to do before I head up to join my siblings to support my parents as they make their way through this major transition. I pull up that Louie Armstrong song again and push play. I love that man’s gravelly voice.

I hear babies crying, I watch them grow They'll learn much more than I'll never know And I think to myself what a wonderful world

Here we are, aren’t we? All of us within the circle of life. You, me, everyone. We’re somewhere along the continuum, and we never know where. There’s something so transformative about being in the presence of the innocence of a child. It unburdens us from our own preoccupations. It’s perfectly suited to direct a sunrise over the fact that our lives are gifts. We’re a bunch of gifts walking around town. When one of us leaves the fold for good and passes on, the sun seems to dim, but it hasn’t. As sad as it can become, and it can become devastating, there’s still sun out there. It might take time to see this.

If you ever need a little extra light, you should go tell my neighbors that you’re open to babysitting their kids. Or call my cousin. In whichever way you can borrow, get yourself a kid or two in your kitchen and hang out with them and become the lucky recipient of the reminder of what a wonderful world it is. The little people are a pristine help in this way. It’s not that they know the world is so wonderful and tell us. It’s that they are the wonderful.

What a ray of solace and beauty when you need it.

Be well, dear people.