September 21, 2020

In the evenings, Robert sometimes assembles puzzles, builds birdhouses, or completes a project from a Kiwico crate.  Two days ago, Robert opened a box from Kiwico. It contained cards with information about Australia and components needed to complete two activities. One was to build a jumping kangaroo, the second to make a coral reef panorama. With minimal help from his sister, Robert constructed the kangaroo and the kangaroo jumped. It jumped quite a few times as each of us wanted to play with it.

Then we moved to the second job. It required painting white coral shapes. Amanda pour three colors into small containers and with Q-tips we began to color. That didn’t take long.  We left them to dry. Amanda picked the small cups with the remaining paint, but Robert protested. He didn’t want the paint to be disposed of. He wanted paints to be poured back into tiny bottles. That was impossible. The only solution acceptable by Robert was to use the paint by… painting some more.

And so we did.  At first we used Q-Tips  in our attempt to create a picture according to rules of pointillism.  We made a lot of tiny points, but we still didn’t use all the paints. So we took cotton balls and painted with them.  Soon, the paint was gone and the picture was done. It had many colors and many spots. Most importantly, however, it contained memory of the time we all painted together feeling happy, free, and connected.