Somewhere around the year and half mark, Ansel and I were outside observing a beautiful sunset together, as we often do. The horizon was filled with enormous, stacked pink and apricot clouds. I asked him “Aren’t they pretty? Pink and orange and purple!” Ansel pointed to the clouds and said, very clearly, “Mama, paint!”
I stared at him and thought surely not, then repeated several other things I thought he might have meant, but he shook his head until I asked, “You want mama to do a painting of the clouds?” And he confidently confirmed, “Yes, mama paint.”
I was not aware first, that he knew the word “paint,” second, that he understood I paint, and third, that painting is an act that captures beauty and images in the world around us. I added this most recent installation to my long list of moments that teach me how vastly we underestimate the depth of understanding babies and young children possess. It is difficult not to equate understanding with communication. But when the communication finally does come, and you feel a newly forming mind touch your own mind, the spark of electricity that arcs between them is difficult to forget.
The previous year, I’d been outside with ten month old Ansel observing a different set of luminous, colorful clouds. He became distracted for a few minutes by the neighbor’s dog (his first and only word at that time), and when we looked back to the sky, the color had gone and the clouds were only a soft blue-gray. He looked at me, pointed meaningfully at the clouds, and signed “all done.” I felt the strange tingling that I always feel when I realize the water I’m swimming in is deeper than I thought, when I catch a glimpse of the person he will become. I will paint him all the clouds he asks for, until I can no longer paint.