The Rainbow Man

Jack started drawing faces recently, as I mentioned in the past. He's stepped it up recently, using different colored crayons to create a single face. An orange eye, a green eye, a blue nose, a purple mouth. He calls it The Rainbow Man.

It's absolutely great. They all -- I think he's drawn about 20 or 30 over the past week -- have the rainbow element in common, but each one is slightly different. A misshaped oval head that looks like anything from a balloon to a potato to a peanut. (The best ones, in my opinion, have big ol' chins.) Two fried egg eyes, usually different sizes (but not always). A big round W.C. Fields nose. And then a loopy, crooked grin that starts below one eye and goes all the way down to the bottom and curves up again. Three hairs sticking up straight from the top of his head. Eyebrows sometimes. Ears, on occasion; sometimes yes, sometimes no. All the faces are happy, goofy, beautiful. He could make 100 or 200 and I'd never grow tired of them. Rainbow Man.

Tonight he asked me to draw one, and I agreed. Got out a bunch of different colored crayons ("Get a lot of colors, Daddy," he said), and then drew one much like his. Only not. It was awkward. The head was too normal shaped. The misshapen eyes too intentional. It was like an adult trying to copy a child's work, which of course it was, and it doesn't work.

I said to Jack, well, you make much better Rainbow Men than Daddy. But Jack was very encouraging. "That's good, Daddy. I think you made a very nice Rainbow Man." That might have been the best part of the whole thing -- Jack trying to make me feel better about a picture that was obviously nowhere near as awesome as his own.

I have one hanging on my wall. There are a bunch on Jack's wall -- he keeps wanting to hang more -- and a stack on the dining room table. Perhaps I'll make them into a book one day.

Rainbow Man.