Last July I wrote a diary about a visit from my nephew and his then nearly 10 year old granddaughter. During their visit, my nephew pointed out one of my carvings to her and she refused to believe that I had made it. Her disbelief continued even after I showed her a work in progress. After I gave up convincing her of the provenance of my work, she said she would believe I could make carvings if I made her a shark for her 10th birthday. I made no promises, but did eventually make a shark. When my nephew saw it, he offered to purchase it on the spot. I made him a price which he agreed to, but I then recommended that he shouldn’t buy it until his granddaughter had seen it and approved of it. I suspected that it wouldn’t fit the concept of a shark she had likely picked up from the Disney movie Shark Tales.
The entire world has changed since that visit. I finished the carving I had been working on, successfully reducing it to the 40 pound limit required by one of the juried shows I intended to enter and wrote a diary about it. It won a $200 award in that show, which was last October. I entered it again in The U.S. Bank Celebration of the Arts at The Kentucky Museum in Bowling Green, KY. It won a $125 award at that show. The reception for that show was on February 28 and was attended by close to 300 people, Alison and I among them. I shook hands with two people upon receiving my award. We washed our hands throughly before leaving the museum and again as soon as we got home. Not too long afterward, we received notification that The Kentucky Museum will be closed for the foreseeable future and that our artwork will remain in place until restrictions on gatherings are lifted.
Yesterday, completely unexpected, my nephew dropped in along with his 10 year old granddaughter. She is, of course, out of school and has been staying with him for the past three days. When Alison saw them pull up, I could tell by the look on her face that she was thinking — disease vector. But what was I to do? Turn them away after wondering for so long what she would think of the shark? I made it last September and had already had a six month wait for her reaction. Much longer and she might become completely uninterested in sharks.
When they came in, I got the shark down from the high spot it had been sitting and put it on the dining room table. She sat across the table from me, my nephew sat in a rocker beyond the table and Alison stood in the threshold to the next room, where she could take careful note of every surface either of them touched. And yes, I measured the table this morning to see exactly how far away I was from her — about five feet.
She sat there for some while running her fingers over the surface of the wood and the limestone rock it’s mounted on. I finally commented that I had not tried to make it like the sharks in Shark Tales. Surprise — Her interest in sharks had not sprung from that movie. It had come from another movie about a tornado sucking up sharks and dropping them on land. Her first question was if it was a bull. Assuming she was asking which sex it was, I said I didn’t make the parts that determined that. She disputed that. I was getting a little wide eyed, wondering where she was going with this until she pointed out the number of gill slits meant it was a girl. She then repeated that it was a bull shark. My nephew then interjected, “You just said it was a girl! Now you say it’s a bull.”
At that moment, it finally sunk in to me what she was saying. It was a female by the number of gill slits. Bull shark is its species name. I don’t remember which species I worked from and have not checked, but was impressed by what seemed like genuine interest in real sharks.
The bottom line is she approved. In fact, she loved it and took it with her.
Before they left, she commented on my telescope, which was the only other object on the dining room table. I had failed to put it away after birding earlier. She said she had a telescope, but not as big as this one. Of course I had to offer to let her look through it and of course she wanted to look through it. It’s a Pentax, a damn good scope. After I fetched the tripod, retracted the legs down to about her height and followed her out the door she asked, “How old are you?”
“I’m 71.”
“No you’re not.”
What was I to say to that? I figured that in her mind I probably looked about 100, but I just went with the flow and said, “Okay. So how old am I?”
“50.”
Don’t know why she said it, but it made my day.
She wanted to look at the moon. I don’t know exactly where the moon is right now, but the sky was completely overcast, and that wasn’t going to happen. I focused on a house about a mile and a half away. It wowed her. She wanted to look at a bird. I had to get in such strain bending over low enough to focus the scope, I decided to let her search for a bird herself. She found one — a Bluebird. She was wowed again.
When they finally left, Alison used Clorox wipes on every surface either of them touched, but it was worth it.