Recent visits to a couple of California's Missions brought to mind grade school. Grade school, you question?! Yes, Grade School.
In the fourth grade we studied the missions of California. And we visited Mission San Francisco Solano in Sonoma, California. I vividly remember standing beneath a large, old tree in the courtyard behind the mission. I don't know why it made such an impresion. But visiting the same place recently brought me back to that moment, around twenty years ago, that stood out so starkly in my memory.
As a finale to our studies of the Missions, Each student was required to make a model of a Mission of their choice. An actual, phsyical model made by hand, not computer (
this was back in the day when The Oregon Trail was the game of choice on old Macintosh LCs and had to be booted manually from floppy discs...)
(OHMYGOSHIAMOLD!!!)
I really can't remember which mission I chose. But I do remember exactly what it looked like and have a perfect aerial view of it in my mind's eye. It was white with a red roof, had brown wooden pillars and a chapel and a fountain and fields...
Yah, you're right, I'm describing EVERY Spanish Mission.
If given a photo, I could pick out my mission. So there. Nyah. (Okay, I just looked it up, it was the Santa Barbara Mission.)
Anyhoo. My Mission project was simply stunning. It was the best of the projects. Not that I'm biased. It simply was the best of the projects. Making this thing was a BIG darned deal. I dragged my mother down to the local art supply and spent more than an hour walking around the aisles, trying to decide what to construct my project from.
And after careful consideration and much thought, I decided that my Mission would be modeled from a very large, rectangular, gray slab of damp clay sitting encased in a large plastic bag in the center of the store.
My mother tried her best to dissuade me from the clay, for some reason. I don't know what the reason for the resistance was, but I do remember her being displeased with my choice.
But I stuck to my guns. It was to be the clay. It
HAD to be the clay. What else would give my project such an authentic look? I couldn't think of anything. Sugarcubes wouldn't cut it. Neither would styrafoam.
So we got the clay. And white paint. And red paint for the roof. And dried peat moss for the fields and fake fences and little tiny plastic farm animals.
And I took my slab of clay and accessories home and then began to fret. And worry. And realized that I had NO idea how to attack/build my project. I was/am a VERY literal child/person. In order to know how to work with mediums I needed to actually see the materials worked with. I stressed about working with the clay, about it drying out or becoming too wet and actually shaping it into the large, long, rectangular shape I was after, with a proper roof and a chapel... Oh the stress! It was huge and traumatic for my ten-year old (?) self.
But I vaguely remember a large knife to cut the clay pieces with, and a large piece of plywood for the base of my model and a bucket of water to keep the clay damp.
And past that, I really don't remember anything else to do with the building/shaping of my model. I remember applying the peat moss and plastic fencing/animals, and maybe shaping some clay windows and doing a bit of painting.
Each afternoon I'd dabble a bit and each night I'd go to sleep. And in the morning I'd come back and be amazed at how my project had progressed... And my ten-year-old mind somehow believed that it was due to my own amazingness.
Uh... Right. My not-ten-year-old mind understands what really happened.
I'm sure you understand what I'm getting at.
My Father took over. (Maybe my Mother too, but I think it was my Dad) My Father, the builder of all things that needed to be built. The fixer of cars and washing machines and shoes and bicycles. My Father, who could do anything, figure out anything and explain anything!
(Same Father who, two years later, built me a Roman Chariot for a project on Rome... yah, it was SO SWEET.) (
My Mom was pretty rad too, in her own ways, in case you were wondering.)
And all of this explanation leads me to the point of this story, which is:
Parents are cool people.
