Portrait of the Artist

While my wife and I were visiting him yesterday afternoon, my older son kept busy by drawing a picture. Like all of a sudden, he's fuckin' Van Gogh. Or back in kindergarten. I noticed that none of his colored pencils had erasers on them and he explained how some kids rubbed them on their arms and legs until it burned their skin.

And on that happy note, we started talking about how things needed to change when he comes home in a few days and he sat there quietly coloring in small circles, which he then strung together into something that resembled a rainbow of candy necklaces. As we continued to draw our own lines (stay on meds, go to school, stop smoking pot), he did the same.

He kept his head down while he sketched large clouds over the rainbow and said that he wasn't gonna stop smoking, and then he drew a sun with a sad face on it and said that he didn't care if he went to jail. As a finishing touch, he picked up a black pencil and wrote FUCK LIFE under the rainbow, folded up the paper and told us to go home and put it on the refrigerator.

Two hours later, he called me to apologize.