The first time I actually got in trouble I was five years old and it was Mother’s Day weekend. My best friend, Erin, and I sat on my driveway, concrete warmed our legs, clad in plaid, pastel Bermuda shorts. I ran my finger along the concrete’s cracks, pausing to avoid ants who scurried over mountainous gravel bumps and digging my bitten finger nails into the dirt to pluck out small weeds.
It was a rarity to find weeds, my mother has always been meticulous. Our flowerbeds are covered with fresh mulch as soon as daisies bloom, our hallway’s coffee brown hardwood flooring is vacuumed every other day to ensure it’s free of loose dog hair, and our house is cleaned from top to bottom each Friday so that guests aren’t able to tell that we actually live there.
It was your typical May evening, golden rays of sun beamed across the grass which was now green and fluffy as opposed to dull, crunchy grass that stood in its place only two months before.
“It’s Mother’s Day,” Erin said, her voice breaking through humidity laced air. “I didn’t get my mom a present.”
I nodded my head in agreement, my curls bouncing up and down. All I had gotten my mother, with my dad’s help, was a soft pink Gerber daisy that would certainly be eaten by a rabbit or squirrel within a week.
My mother loves art, pottery to be specific. Pottery with sharp edges and primary colors; chaotic at a glance but bound to organization by clean lines. We took a pottery class together once. We never went back to pick up our sculpted monkey. It resembled a Fisher-Price stackable ring toy with ears and a tail more than it resembled a monkey.
In our naive youthful minds Erin and I decided that there was no better way to show our mothers we loved them than with a fingerpainting on f limsy eight by eleven printer paper. We retrieved assorted Crayola paints from my thoroughly loved art table, and sprawled out on the driveway, jars of paint littered around us.
Pots of magenta and chartreuse held down two corners of what would be a family portrait, keeping our thin paper canvases from flying away in gusts of wind that picked up around us. Paint dried on the sheet, my parents’ faces changing from glossy streaks to chalky lines of blues and reds.
“Artists sign their paintings,” I said as I admired my work.
“Anyone can sign their art,” Erin said pausing, “What about a footprint?”
She was right, with a footprint there’s no mistaking a piece of artwork is yours. My grubby fingers smeared cold, purple paint on my bare foot and I stomped on the back of my masterpiece. Before our signatures could dry, a drop of rain splattered onto my gritty acrylic print transforming it into a water color.
In a manic flurry of panic, we gathered everything from the soon to be wet cement avoiding destruction of our masterpieces at all costs. Slippery fingers wet with paint gripped the silver doorknob which led us into my home where we were met with a crisp, air-conditioned gust contrasting whipping humid winds outside. We attempted hopping to the bathroom on one foot, but our uncoordinated limbs could only make it a few steps without leaving grape purple footprints.
Our powder room has always been painted white and adorned with pristine hand towels. One hanging from a hook on the wall, a few others sitting in a small basket on the counter waiting to be used. The communal space is disinfected at least once a week.
My best friend and I safely slipped into the bathroom; happy we could still gift our mothers our Picasso juniors. All that we needed to do was wash our hands and feet free of paint. A sturdy knock on the wooden door warned us that our surprise plan would not come to fruition.
“Girls what are you doing?” My mother’s voice boomed, threatening to break the door down if we didn’t unlock it in seconds. A swift twist of the lock and the door swung open.
“We made you paintings,” we chorused in quivering voices as two angry mothers and a hallway resembling an artist’s studio appeared.
At seventeen I wanted to go to art school.
“Why not study biology or business? There’s job security there,” my mother urged.
“But mom,” I groaned in response, “Where’s the fun in job security?”
Last month I spilled black paint on my white, bedroom carpet. An audible gasp escaped my lips, my mother’s shouts of inquiry followed from downstairs. I tried to clean up the liquid, but paper towels only pushed it deeper into the carpet’s fibers revealing the paint’s sad blue and green undertones. I ask myself, “What have we been trying to clean up all this time?”