an art lesson from ma

[it's great having an artist in the family—my mom. that is until i took a lesson from her. that's when it became apparent that the welling pain from years of the brothers crane torturing her during our non-informative years still lies shallow, just below the surface, waiting for any reason to ooze out sideways. well, here. here's what happened. you be the judge.]

*****

mom is an accomplished professional artist.
her medium is oil paints.
she gave me my first art lesson the other day.

it didn't go so well.

after five hours, my mountains looked like the ocean, the ocean looked like the sky and the sky looked like nonfat milk.
but i think it was when i tried to patch the whole thing up by dropping in a heather field that ma snapped.

ma: bobby, what are you doing? what is that now?
me: a field of irish heather.
ma: a what?
me: a heather patch.
ma: not on this planet. let me see that for a second. give me your pallet.

she frantically tried to create the right color green from the goop on my pallet.

ma: your pallet is one big color, and it's gray brown at that. what the heck did you do?
me: yeah, it's drab. i like drab.
ma: heather can't be drab. i'll drab you.
ma (continued): i can't make green from these colors. i'm going to need art lessons myself after this is over. i can't continue this. it's ruining my art eye. you ever think that maybe you're better off sticking to the guitar?
me: wow! that bad! maybe i should go back to painting by numbers.
ma: yes! paint by numbers! that's a great idea! paint to 600,000 and come back in five years and we'll take it from there.
me: but i'll lose interest by then.
ma: exactly! and where's your father? i need a gimlet and i need it now!