Kaleidoscope

In our house, it isn’t just the little kids who color. The grown-up ones do, too. These are from Prism Designs. I decided a long time ago that if I’m going to color with my kids, I’m going to choose things that are fun to color.

These coloring times always have hidden treasures. In the midst of this quiet activity together, certain kinds of conversation materialize. I couldn’t find a poem that fit, so I wrote one. (A rash move for a non-poet.)

Kaleidoscope

My daughters sit on either side of me.
We’re coloring together, hunched around
a table less than four feet off the ground
and scattered thick with possibility.

The markers are an alphabet of hues,
all spilling out across the tabletop.
The concentration gathers in a knot,
but visiting together shakes it loose.

We talk of the untangling of the lines
that lie so cleverly along the pages –
Patterns perceived according to our ages
emerge from white space into bright design.

This hour with my children spreading colors
restores a symmetry to countless others.

My 4-year-old wanted to try one from my “grown-up” coloring book:

So did my 7-year-old:

Pretty good, huh?