According to ancient Jewish doctrine, or so I’ve read, once the name of the God has been written down in any form it can never, ever be willingly destroyed.
Well someone must have whispered this piece of lore to my husband, because that is his exact same mentality when it comes to my daughter’s ‘masterpieces’ she creates at preschool.
Don’t get me wrong; I will treasure her little Mother’s Day present she made me – a laminated placemat with her handprints stamped across as decoration and a picture of her smiling – nervously – at the camera. But I must confess that I am very close to drawing the line at others: like those giant sheets of paper that only have one jagged line, like a lightening bolt, through the middle. Or splodges of watercolour paint, shaken over the page so it resembles less a picture than a slice of mouldy bread that you discover a week after its expiry.
Oh, I am a terrible creature.
And yes, I know I can re-use these creations as wonderful, ‘rustic’ wrapping paper. Or frame the better ones and thus making them immortal. And perhaps I will. But there are some days when I look at the gigantic pile that’s growing ever bigger and just feel the urge to whisk it all up and put it into the recycling bin.
“She will never know,” I tell myself.
There I am wrong.
For there have been a few occasions when I’ve gently, sneakily, folded up a piece of paper with more glitter falling off of it than remaining stuck in place and like a policeman she has manhandled her precious works off me.
“No! This is MINE. I made it.”
She then goes and dumps it on her bedroom floor and again forgets its existence.
Then, when I try again later, my husband nabs me by the front door.
“What are you doing?!”
“What does it look like?”
“But you can’t. We have to keep them all.”
*sigh*
What’s a mother to do?!
