Metaphor

There should really be an eraser or two, I think as I sit down to eat my blueberry muffin. The girls, having already devoured their chocolate chip muffin, head to the chalkboard to draw.

Our neighborhood Whole Foods has redone its cafeteria section, adding smaller tables and bright colored chairs for kids. There’s a bookshelf with a few books in it, and a chalkboard, thus creating what I believe is a perfect cafe experience for parents with young kids.

Except the chalkboard is filled with past markings, scribbles, beginnings of sentences and half finished pictures. Where will my girls draw? How will they see the marks they’ve made? Perhaps they won’t even bother to pick up the chalk because they assume there is no room for them.

I think to pick up a napkin to wipe a space but stop because Harper’s making “vroom vroom” noises.  I look to see her pushing chalk along the long lines as though they are race tracks and her piece of chalk is a car. Hadley joins in and the girls race from one side of the board to the other.

I sit and ate my blueberry muffin while they color inside loops that were created earlier from lines and swirls. And after they explore the chalkboard awhile they find a place among the other children’s creations, adding to what was made with uniqueness only Hadley and Harper can bring.

“It doesn’t matter what you do, …. so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away.” -from Fahrenheit 451