Our summer schedules seem to fill up almost overnight.  In a blink of an eye we realize we can’t attempt to take the kids camping (oh, darn) and may not make it to the ocean because all our weekends are booked solid.  How does that happen so far in advance?  I thought summer was for lazy days, kicking back with a margarita, and catching up on some good books.  With kids, we have to pencil in weekends away months in advance, and you don’t have to tell me about how, once they’re involved in sports and other extracurricular activities, it’s only going to get worse.  So much for relaxation!  And where is my margarita?

A few weekends ago, Jax and I found ourselves with a Saturday morning and nothing to do with it.  Daddy was working around the house, Em still takes a morning nap; what should we do to fill the time?  Something that we can only do without the little clingy monkey tagging along–go to AVA, the local art gallery, for their open studio for children!

Jax is familiar with the gallery.  In fact, he loves it.  I mentioned how they set up a kids’ table at the local farmers’ market, but the real love affair began the first time we went there and Jax was so completely awestruck by the entire experience.  I loved it so much that I wrote about it for our local paper!  And this experience was even better, if you can believe it.

I don’t normally get all hokey but I felt like we were just meant to be there that day.  Which is ironic, because we were definitely not meant to be there.  The children’s studio was closed for the summer!  We arrived hand-in-hand, the $5 entrance fee tucked into Jax’s shirt pocket, only to discover a sign that said CAOS (children’s art open studio, I think) was closed until September.  Try telling your little artiste after you have already walked into the building that the studio is closed.  It was not computing.  His little eyebrows furrowed and he stared at me quizzically.  I couldn’t explain it to him, so I took us by the director’s office to have another, more authoritative adult tell him that he couldn’t paint today. 

Except that didn’t happen.  In a world where people care more about money than meaningful interaction, the director surprised me.  She looked at my son, obviously crestfallen, and spoke directly to him.  She has always done that and I love her for it.  She asked him if he wanted to paint today, and he shyly answered yes.  Would he like her to open the studio for him? My eyebrows shot up in surprise, flabbergasted that she would go to the effort and expense for one student.  One child, really.  He may never be a student of art.  But she knows, like I know, that if he is rejected now, at this moment, he may never want to come back again.  Kids are fickle and their interests ebb and flow.  A closed door now may destroy his interest forever.  She knows this, and because she does, she enraptured a child and his mother with her kindness.

You may not believe this when I tell you, but she unlocked the door, turned on the light, brought out supplies, gave me the lay of the land, and then returned to her office.  The trust she placed in us spoke volumes.  I would not, for the world, have had my son waste one sheet of paper, fling one brushful of paint, lose one pastel crayon.  Her implicit trust that she would leave us alone in her beautiful studio was all she had to do to put us both on our best behavior.  It reminded the skeptic in me that sometimes to inherently trust someone first does more to build their character than you know.  And I made darn sure my son knew that this was an important place and that he had to treat it accordingly.

So here’s the magical part.  We were meant to have been there.  We had the studio all. to. ourselves.

It reminded me of the feeling of reverence you feel when you walk into an empty church.  Even though there is no one there to shush you, you speak in whispers.  You kneel and bless yourself.  Because that is the way you behave in church.  I was reminded of the sanctity of empty spaces, of solitude, of creation.  And my boy knew it, too, somehow.  It’s just in us somewhere.

Now don’t get me wrong.  There was no divine intervention.  This angelic behavior only lasted thirty minutes, max.  But the potential to learn respect for adults, for important spaces, for the ability to even spend a morning like this was there, and it was not wasted.  I am grateful that we went and spent the morning this way.

Ah, but the beauty of teachable moments is that they don’t last long!

You have to catch them in the moment, otherwise you blink and their maturity is gone.  And with it, your engaged, respectful preschooler.  Leaving in his wake…

…a toddler monster!

Yes, he vacillates between preschooler and toddler.  He has amazing, enlightened moments where I get a glimpse of life after this power struggle of two and I’m sure three-years-old and its claim to independence.  I see my bright, funny, polite, empathetic boy, and I’m proud of who he will become.

And then there’s this kid.  Who brought him?

After we made a birthday picture for Nana using pastels (which got increasingly crazier as the awe of the studio started to wear off)–

–apparently all this good behavior got the best of him and he felt an unstoppable urge to resume normal two-year-old behavior.

I let him climb the stair that leads to the room with dress-up clothes and other magical childhood paraphenelia for a few minutes while I cleaned up our supplies.  And then the kid practically begged me to take silly photos of him.  Well, you don’t have to ask me twice!

Oh, my silly, special, wonderful little boy.  What a morning that so illustrates who you are and a glimpse of who you may become.  I am so grateful to the AVA gallery for giving us the opportunity to spend our morning this way.  And since Jax had JDubbs bring one of his gallery paintings with him to work only this morning, it’s clear he hasn’t forgotten our time there!  I know we both look forward to going back.