Kill it with fire

My younger brother and I were envious of my older brother who set off for his first day in grade school in a bigger, different school than ours. After he left, my mom gave us scraps of paper and water colors to keep ourselves entertained while she went about with chores. My older brother would later come home bearing loopy versions of the ABC’s that we found fascinating and copied despite having no idea what they stood for. I particularly loved the e’s, the l’s and the i’s and wrote them in long continuous streams of loops. I looked forward to being in grade school one day.

Unfortunately, it was overwhelming. I got a lot of pressure and expectations from teachers who previously taught my older brother finding him to be a prodigy and only disappointment in me. I felt out of place when I found other students to know more than I did. I was terrified of numbers, I found that the loopy ABC’s actually stood for the alphabet and we were expected to compose short paragraphs using them everyday. I had trouble spelling my short name. For a while, I came to hate my name… cursing it for the difficult letters that refused to loop in continuous lines.

I eventually figured out what everything stood for and found that I was a particularly good artist when it came to drawing assignments. I was so good my classmates would offer to give me their lunch moneys just to finish an illustrated assignment for them. I also found that I liked writing as it kept a record of things and events.

I later found that I could combine my drawings and writing together to create picture books. I horded as much scrap paper as I could, bind them into miniature books and drew and wrote endlessly. I eventually composed a storybook that involved a girl, faeries, white dwendes and black dwendes. I made sure to give my dogs guest appearances. It took me a very long time to finish the book but when I did, I treasured it and kept it in a plastic envelope with all the other scrap paper filled artwork and makeshift books. I showed it off to my parents who simply read it and said “Good job.” Surprisingly, neighbors and relatives who saw it seem really impressed especially with the carefully colored pictures.

My room was usually littered with scrap paper, scattered pens and pencils but I eventually cleaned it up and put them away. It annoyed me when my mom had a habit of telling me to clean it up right when I’m in the middle of drawing. One day, I found that my plastic envelope had disappeared and looked all over my room wondering where it was. It was no longer in its usual place and wondered what might have happened to it. My mom was burning freshly cut grass in the back and since she had just cleaned up the house, I went to ask if she might know where my plastic envelope was. I didn’t really have to wonder what could possibly have happened to it because on top of a bench was an empty plastic envelope just a few meters away from the bonfire. I asked why she burned my drawings. The reply I got was that it was what I get for not tidying up my room. My room was tidy and there weren’t any scattered debris of any sort. I was too afraid to present any challenge as she didn’t seem to be in a good mood either. I felt an urge to drag the burning embers of my artwork from the flames.

I don’t know if it was a deliberate action taken by my mother. I would later try to nag her for some details why she could possibly have decided to take those drawings instead. Other answers I was given was that she needed kindling and they were they only scraps of paper she found. The envelope contained the very first story I wrote and finished and I had always hoped that I would keep it forever. When I explained this, I was told that I can always make another one.

Later on, I would continue to draw further but wrote stories less. My writing was limited to what was assigned in school. Future creative writing proved fruitless as I found that I had trouble finishing any stories. I found that my drawings made me somewhat of a celebrity in school on the other hand. Everybody else seemed really impressed and amazed with something that came so easily to me but was ignored or didn’t amount to much in my mother’s eyes.

I would later find hints from my mother’s conversations with neighbors or a few of our relatives that she made sure to instill humility in her children by treating them normally. My older brother was often suggested to skip grades because of how smart he was to which my mom would reply that she was afraid if he could cope socially so she wanted him to stay among children the same age as him. When I was brought up, it amounted to something along the lines that it would be fruitless since we didn’t have any connections, were poor and art education was expensive; I was a girl, and I would probably grow out of the artsy phase someday. She took special attention with my younger brother until we found that he turned out to be a math wizard in high school.

I’m not sure if I came to be a nuisance to my mother later on when I ended up competing in art competitions often as my school’s representative and won most of them. I kept fighting the pride that bubbled up reminding myself that it was a sin, playing back her comments about humility. The cheers and loud applause from a crowd while on stage to receive an award often brought butterflies in my stomach and euphoria but would dissolve when I would look back to catch a glimpse of my seemingly bored mother. When I find my thoughts drifting to wanting her to be proud of me, I would suddenly remember how blessed she must feel for having three gifted children, one of them standing on stage being awarded for her achievements right now… and then… pride. She must be feeling it. She’s trying to be humble about it right now. I secretly wished to see pride in her eyes but I neither saw it when I turned or felt it behind me.