chapter 5

Chapter 5: What comes after a drawing?

After all chores were done, I had to re-dress. Walking in clothes wet of snow should make me really sniffle, and would get me the cold, I did use as excuse not to go skiing this weekend.
Of course that was the last I did want to, so I asked Cindy: “can we sit downstairs, at the warm kitchen table or in the living room, near the fire? Can they hear you when you tell me something?”

“Of course not! And certainly not hear me, when I do not want so. The problem will be, that when you have to ask, what I want you to draw, it will sound strange.
You can a few times talk like: and what shall I put there, or: a few waves besides that ship will make it a bit more like it is sailing.
But if you talk to much loudly when nobody is around, people mostly think that is strange. What you can do is this: Did you not tell me, you had to draw something for histooo...”

Again did Cindy stumble on a word she found strange.
“History-classes,” I helped.

“Yes, you are right. We are talking about the middle ages in that class, and have to make a drawing of something that did exist in that time!”

“And what could that be? Housing, a workshop, a ship, that could fit in marvelously!”

Cindy’s eye had a glimmer again.It looked like there came some hope in her mind, “we are going to achieve things, I before only had hoped for.”

I wondered, but also wanted to know more: “I will not say: how come!” and a wink of my eye showed Cindy the joke.

“But what exactly do you need? Will you tell me if you have any idea about that?“

”Well... not totally, but in general”

I could not smile by that words: “Daddy only says ‘in general’, when he does mean something, that is mostly true, but not very precisely told. So, please, what do you want me to draw? By the look at your face, you rather would like a lot of them, very easy sketched, and not just one, entirely accurate.”

“You could be right. I did not dare to ask that, but it does give us more possibilities, you see.”

Now I got a bit impatient: “Is it so hard to decide? I would like to start, I do like drawing very much, but every time I like to start, there seems to come a new consideration.”

Cindy seemed to understand and said: “May be we can do two things at the same time?
Are you allowed to make a small booklet of drawings, with on each page a quick sketch of one of those scenes?”

I had to think a moment: that would give me a lot of work, but to be honest, a lot of good points at school too! So why not?
Therefore I answered: ”Of course I could. How big those drawings have to be? And what items must be on there?”

Cindy was still for a moment, scratched behind her ear in her hair, like that motion helped, and said: “Would your teacher be satisfied with drawings about the size of you hand, but than a lot of them, and then clipped together, if you do know how to do that?”

“That sound just like what we call a pocket book!” I answered.
“Of course that is al right. But why?”

“So we can take it in a kind of bag around our middle, under our clothes.
By that it is not in sight, but near at hand. And when you can find a small, good protected mirror, or rather two, we are much, much more safe during our adventures.
And you have done your homework for school too!”

So this is what we did: I made drawings of a shop with food, of a windmill, of a pirates-ship, of my bedroom, and many, many more.
All were things of which Cindy told that they could be useful.

I also made a few drawings, that did not look so nice, but about whom she insisted, they should be in there too: a mountain that was spitting fire.
An other one, I did not like either, was a beginning tornado, still just far away, but very dark and scary. But upon that she also insisted.

I did not like the last two at all, but when she asked for a third one, a drawing of an earthquake, I was so in confusion, I first said loud and clear: ”NO!”

Cindy said then: “Please, understand me well, I do not like that either.
But the most harsh, cruel and fearless of the Otherlanders dó like circumstances like that!You do not have to put this three in your booklet for school, but ours do need those!”

I only could wonder: “Ours??? Ours would need those, so I have to do it all over again? That will take ages, and, can I make them identical enough?”
I totally had forgotten she mentioned that before after all this drawning...

Cindy answered: “Lea, I have seen at your school, and in one of the shops nearby, a kind of machine, that makes doubles. They all looked the same to me.
Would that help? Could we use something like that?”

Now it was my turn to laugh about my own forgetting: “Did not you see the printer I have got by my computer, to do my homework, and to keep my blog?”

Cindy shook her head in total deny: “I do not what know a computer, or a printer is, and was going to ask about that later. But why?”

I answered: “I can keep my booklet for my school-project fresh and clean, and without the last three drawings, ready to give the teacher. And…”
Now I was the one who kept the suspense a bit going on, “and I can make as much copies, as we do need. How about that?”

“Fantastic! Let’s do it, I cannot wait to start.
Only, the rest of the family does not need to know about the copies. The original must be wrapped in paper, and put in your school-bag. OK?”

I wondered, but could guess that this was a safety-measure.
We worked on it, and Cindy learned more about how things go in our world.
When the two of us were ready, we had the original booklet in my school-bag, and each a copy with 3 extra drawings, clipped together like a paperback with some extra white pages, for you never could know, where that would lead to.

© Nan van Daalen, all rights reserved.