I don’t remember learning it, but there was a definite opinion in the kindergarten class of Washington Elementary that separated those that “colored” and those that “scribbled.” How easily we were placed into those categories, the rule followers and the rebels. I can see now how those confinements didn’t really do either group any favors. 

When my mother used some of her hard earned money to purchase a coloring book at Olson’s Super Market, I knew how special it was, and I treated it as such. Respectfully I colored within the lines. And she would smile, but only with an “I see…” not with a “wow!” So I would go back into my bedroom, lean against my twin bed, sheeted in Raggedy Ann and Andy, and seek permission from the line of dolls that sat beside me. Big Suzy, with her hair so golden it almost seemed plugged in, was the first to say, “go on…go ahead…” I reopened the off brand crayolas and began to draw outside of the lines. Embellishing. Offering. Filling the entire page. Outside the lines, with no lines at all, this was not a scribble, I told myself, (unsure of why that was even deemed derogatory), this was without rules or regulations, this was simply the joy of creation. And the wow I received in the afternoon kitchen from my mom, and all the future wows, I realized were not about perfection, nor shock, but for the creation itself, the art of being. 

Yesterday I allowed myself to just paint. With no plan. No idea really at all. No lines or constructs. No intention of sale or even keeping. Just the joy of doing. Of being myself. It still sets me free, the external and internal power of a wow!