A String of Pearls

“Knock, knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Come in!”

She’s on her bed, all tucked in, sketch pad on lap, earbuds in.

“Whatcha doing?”

“Drawing.”

“Can I see?”

“Yeah.” She tilts the pad toward me.

“Cool!”

“Yeah, my friend, Nick, had this gel pen, and I wanted to borrow it. He made me promise to draw him something.”

“You mean you’re giving that away?”

“Yep. Tomorrow.”

“Well, let me take a picture of it first. We have to save it in our own little way.”

“Okay.”

A few hours later, she emerges from her room and drops the sketch pad on the kitchen table where I’m sitting, reading the paper.

Alarmed, I scan the surface. It’s not all that often that our kitchen table is crumb- and sticky spot-free. I, myself, would never set anything of importance on this table without checking first.

Maybe that’s it. Maybe she doesn’t consider this an important work of art. She draws a lot. Perhaps it’s just a three-hour doodle to her.

I grab my camera, anxious to get the picture before she changes her mind. She’s known for fluctuating moods.

“Look at this, Ads, look how neat it looks.” The LCD on my camera magnifies the intensity of every shot. (Still, it looks pretty good here on my laptop screen as well. Each line, in the original work, is one, maybe two, millimeters from the next.)

“Yeah, mom, that’s okay, but this is how I like to photograph this type of art.” She twists the dial to macro, leans down, and angles the camera just so.

I like it, though it reminds me a bit of how my text messages and other up-close reading material have looked lately. Blurry in spots, blurry at some angles, blurry most days now. I’m hoping I can make do until my vision insurance kicks in on January 1st.

I try Addy’s style of shooting the swirly art, thank her for the photography fun and the opportunity to keep her work. Even if it is, to her, just some doodling.