Watercolors and Making It Look Easy

This summer, while on a transatlantic cruise, my eldest asked to join in on a few watercolor classes on the ship. I wasn’t going to say no to her and I found myself doing my best to keep up with her. It’s not that I don’t enjoy art - I do. It’s just that watercolors aren’t a medium I’m particularly familiar with. There’s just something about the way you need to move your wrist, the process of mixing colors, the creation of shadows and shading - I don’t really get it.

All three of my daughters far outpace my artistic ability. It helps that they have each other, and when their screen time runs out for the day, I can often find them sitting together, chatting and drawing. Most of what they draw these days are cartoonish characters, something I might not look twice at. But having seen them practice and improve and iterate, I know there’s a lot more there than meets the eye.

Before I saw the three of them at work, I might have believed that artistic skill was innate, inherent, inborn. And yes, maybe it is to some extent. But as I watch my kids attack new skills with openness and resilience, I realize that maybe a lot of us were sold a bill of goods. We were told were (or weren’t) good artists, good singers, good athletes, or good students. We were ranked and placed and then given attention if we showed immediate aptitude or ignored if we didn’t.

It feels different with my kids. Not in the way where everyone gets a trophy, but in the way where they’re taught that it’s ok to be bad at things. That you don’t have to know everything. That learning a skill means spending time as a beginner - messing up, cleaning up that mess, and starting over. These lessons are taught in school, right alongside math facts and vocabulary.

Sometimes I’m sure their teachers wonder if those messages are actually being heard, actually making a difference. Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t. My kids are particularly stubborn, especially when they feel like they’re not good at something. But it feels different now. Like kids these days are more likely to look at some frustration, some annoying moment in the learning process, and nod. “Yup, this is just a part of life. It’s supposed to feel this way.”

When I was their age, I felt like I had to seem to have it all together. We all did. We had to pretend that we were totally fine, everything was great, and when we did achieve something, it was because we somehow paradoxically had worked hard and were naturally good at it. Something about having it all and making it look easy.

I don’t want that for my kids. Heck, I don’t want it for me. I long ago gave up on the having it all and my hope for them is that they don’t feel like they need to make it look easy. If it’s hard, let it look hard. Life can be hard. Goodness knows middle school is hard. The last thing I want them wasting time on is making it look easy.

I think that’s true for middle age too. There are parts of my life that flow beautifully - friendships that are simple and uncomplicated, skills that I’ve been honing for two decades now. But there are so many parts that are changing - everything from parenting a teenager to dealing with a body that isn’t always up to snuff. And I’m so happy that I have good role models to teach me how to learn to do the hard stuff. Who are always there to remind me, “Yup, this is just a part of life. It’s supposed to feel this way.”