Temperamental Artist With An Appetite For Detail

Today was Christmas Party Day at the boys' school, and I took a half-vacation-day from work so that I could be with Daniel as he worked on a ginger break house at his classroom party. He worked diligently on it, not terribly interested in any suggestions.  In fact, when I came in, he didn't even really look up.  He takes his work very seriously.

Unlike the other ginger-bread houses in the classroom, this one had very extensive details on the grounds, much the way that our yard often does.  Of course, the yard was covered in white-frosting snow, somehwat ahead of our stretch of New England during this unusually mild (so far) winter.  But the ginger-bread house yard had things that, thankfully, our yard doesn't:  several Graham-cracker portions served as pieces of the structure which had fallen to the ground, a "dum-dum" lollipop served as a downed tree (luckily a thing of the past, in our real yard), and packages of Smarties provided fallen tree-limbs.  There was also a bird-bath, with a Hershe's kiss on top, and lots of other things I haven't managed to identify.

But the artist, to my great surprise, turned out to have some self-serving motives:  he told me quite candidly, even during the initial build-out of the grounds, that he had more detail, more content, in his work because he was planning on eating it.  And the Master was true to his word:  no sooner had we gotten to the Corolla, with Ian and Daniel in the back seat, than the boys started dividing the spoils of the hapless house and the wreckage-strewn yard, passing portions of frosting-covered wallage up to the front seat for me.

I had encouraged him to save something - perhaps the main structure - for Mommy to enjoy before eating it. And the artist obliged:  By the time Mommy came home in the evening, the half-pint milk-carton girdings were still up, with some frosting drywall clinging to them, and perhaps a few particles of Graham clapboard, along with the ice-cream-cone tower to the side of the edifice.

(December 21, 2012)