Mary Cassatt Came Today?

Mary Cassatt

One of my students came after school today to see me. She asked me for anything I could give her to make art. She showed me what she has been working on, and she showed me all the art she has made this year in my class. She carries it in her backpack. I am surprised by her passion. I'm trying to clean the art room; it's been a long day.  I could have marginalized her. 

I chose not to. 

Mary Cassatt

Funny, I have been grappling with being marginalized in my world, details not to be gone into. I'd been cutting, gluing and drawing for children all day.  However, I stopped being in my world and joined her in her "passion for art" world. I thoroughly enjoyed her glee as I shared a drawing of a rabbit or a parrot from my file. Maybe she is Mary Cassatt or Georgia O'Keefe or Berthe Morrisot in the making. Maybe she is a little girl that flat out loves art. I want to encourage that, I think, as I look for something else to spark her imagination.

At my kitchen table back in Seattle.

I give her a few of my supplies I have gotten from home along with some various drawings to copy or color. I give her glitter and colored tissue paper; she expresses such joy. She reminds me of, well, me, when I was a young girl loving every minute of anything to do with art or art supplies. We talk about starting an after school art club. Her eyes sparkle and she sends me a broad, isn't art great, fourth grade smile. She slips away cheerfully with all her new treasures in her pink backpack while I think......

maybe I came to Morocco for her.