Yesterday, after a family hike, Jillian needed to run to the store and I was watching a World Cup game on TV. The kids had already had some tablet time that morning, so we asked them to find something else to do.
Joseph chose to play Hungry Hungry Hippos and cause general chaos in the living room.
Brooks, meanwhile, came out of his room carrying his baseball and Pokémon card binder and announced that he was going to draw some Pokémon cards. He grabbed some paper and crayons and set himself up at the kitchen table.
He was quiet for quite a while before finally saying, “Okay, I’m done. Do you want to see my book?”
So I got up and walked into the kitchen to find that he had recreated several Pokémon from his cards onto sheets of paper, drawing them in his own style and coloring them in.
They turned out great, and he was incredibly proud of what he had created.
I think he had drawn four or five different Pokémon by the time he was finished. He eventually wrote their names on the pages, stapled everything together into a book, and later brought it to the family barbecue so he could show everyone and have them sign the back for him.
I took a picture of him standing there coloring those pages and immediately had flashbacks to being a kid myself.
My dad’s parents lived about twenty minutes from us. Not far, but far enough that our visits usually happened once a week or so.
My grandfather had emphysema and was on oxygen, which limited what we could do together. We played checkers on the patio, dug through his fishing gear, and watched shows like Walker, Texas Ranger and Lawrence Welk.
But one of the memories I remember most clearly is sitting at their dining room table with the “funnies” spread out in front of me.
I would have the newspaper comics, a blank sheet of paper, and a box of colored pencils.
Then I would sit there and draw what I saw.
I would copy the characters from the comics onto my own paper, recreating them the same way Brooks was recreating those Pokémon yesterday.
I’m sure I made my own books and comic strips too, proudly showing them off to my grandparents when I was done.
Somewhere along the way, that love of drawing followed me into adulthood.
I eventually enrolled in an animation program in college, convinced that drawing might become a career. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out. The competition was fierce, and the more my work was critiqued, the more I lost the passion that had made me want to draw in the first place.
Eventually I left the program and came home.
These days I don’t draw much beyond the occasional doodle.
It’s funny how life comes back around.
It feels like just yesterday I was the one sitting at a dining room table drawing characters from the newspaper. Then, actually yesterday, it was my own son standing at the kitchen table doing the same thing I had done all those years ago.
I don’t know what Brooks will do as he gets older.
I don’t know if he’ll continue drawing or if this was simply something fun to do on a Sunday afternoon.
What I do know is that he felt a pure sense of enjoyment and accomplishment from what he created.
He was proud of it.
He wanted to show it off.
And there is something wonderfully innocent about that.
It’s something many of us lose as we get older.
We stop creating for the simple joy of creating. We start worrying about expectations, outcomes, criticism, and whether what we’re making is good enough.
Kids don’t think that way.
They sit down with some paper and crayons and see what happens.
Watching Brooks reminded me what that feels like.
It was fun getting a glimpse of that creativity and freedom again.
And I hope he holds onto it for as long as he can.
Because once it’s gone, it’s surprisingly difficult to get back.
The Young Napoleon Project 