Not Alice

I was taking some old apples out to the compost pile yesterday morning and watched what I thought was an orange cat curled up in a spot of sunlight just off the woods. It was a red fox. Probably one of the yelpy family that lives in the den not 10 feet beyond our property line. Fox are morning animals, too, and we see a lot of one another in the spring.

So, Deb bought me lots of watercolor supplies for Christmas. And some really nice colored pencils. One round brush is so pretty and feels so good in my hand that I don’t want to use it. I boxed them all up and took them to Deb’s mom’s house, and after dinner and our gift exchange there, Jody and I spread some newspaper over the dining-room table and started to paint. Have I told you that I do not paint? Now that I think about it, though, my mother has some watercolor thing I did in school framed and hanging in her laundry room, so I must have done this before. Anyway, I followed Jody’s lead. At first I thought I’d draw something and then follow my outline, but all I really wanted to do was to paint, and that’s what Jody did, so I winged it, too. I mean, you get to a certain age and place in your life when you just have to go with whatever comes out.

In no time, we were all sitting at that table and painting our little hearts out. Things got quiet for a long while. Jody and Jerod are really very talented, and it had been a long time since I’d seen them play at art, even though they each have jobs that require an eye. But Deb wins the prize, which surprised me to no end. She used the cover of a book as her guide, and she painted the warmest winter-night scene with snow and light and dark and an old house that looks a lot like the house on her Kentucky farm. People will surprise you.

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