Molasses in January

One of my clearest memories from early childhood involves a kindergarten art project. We were using chalk to make a winter scene on dark blue construction paper, and when each child finished, he or she left the tables and sat down for free play on the carpet. I never made it to the carpet. Instead, I focused on my artwork, giving each snowflake the careful attention it deserved while my classmates left their sloppy work on the tables and scurried off to play with dump trucks and blocks.

I'd like to tell you that all that dedication led to a fruitful career as an artist, but as my wife will tell you, it was just the beginning of a life of dawdling and procrastination. While many have been frustrated by my pokiness, I've usually managed to convince myself that everyone else was over-reacting. Until now. Payback has arrived in the form of my five-year-old daughter.

My mother used to describe me as "slower than molasses in January," and although those words haven't yet crossed my lips in reference to Alison, she's definitely following in my footsteps, ever so slowly.

Kindergarten has changed an awful lot in the past thirty years. While I was busy drawing snowflakes, Alison actually has homework. She brings home a packet every Tuesday, and she's supposed to do a little bit each night before turning it in on Friday. That's usually the way it works, but some weeks -- this week, for instance -- it's different.

We weren't able to get to the homework on Tuesday or Wednesday, so the whole thing was left for Thursday night. In Alison's words: "We have to all my homework tonight, because all the other kids are going to turn it in tomorrow." No problem, except that it was already eight o'clock, our usual target for bedtime.

This week's theme was the number one hundred. Here's what we had to do:

1. Have your child write out all the numbers from 1 to 100.
This wasn't a problem. She could do this unsupervised while I put Henry to bed and Leslie washed the dishes. Still, she took a loooong time, probably at least twenty minutes.

2. Talk to you your child about what she might want to buy with $100, then draw a picture of it.
Alison quickly said she'd like to buy a doggie, so all she had to do now was draw a picture. Her teacher is big on coloring for some reason, something about small muscle development, I think, and Alison has embraced it whole-heartedly. Every inch of the page must be covered in color, no matter how late it might be. Her dog picture was nice, but it took another twenty to thirty minutes.

3. Count out 100 items that you can glue onto a piece of paper to make a picture, like a duck or a rabbit.
Okay, are you serious? Throughout the entire time Alison was laboring on steps one and two, we were trying to figure out what we could possibly use for step three. I suggested pennies, cheerios, cue-tips, and grommets, but these were all vetoed. Finally, at about nine o'clock, Leslie came up with the idea of cutting up pieces of paper, so we went with that. After cutting out and counting a hundred little squares, Alison began the painfully slow process of gluing them onto her paper in the shape of a heart.

I would use the word meticulous to describe her approach to the project, but that would be like calling the South Pole chilly. It just doesn't do it justice. First she would have to select the piece she wanted, then dip her cue-tip into the puddle of glue I had spilled earlier on the kitchen table, then daintily apply the glue to the back of her chosen piece, and finally apply the piece to the paper. With chalk snowflakes flashing before my eyes, I realized that this could take all night. I timed her from one piece to the next, and it took her thirty seconds -- multiply that by a hundred pieces and you've got fifty minutes!

This, I knew, was my punishment for all of the science projects I started the night before they were due, the bills I mailed after they were due, the classes I slept through, and the appointments I missed. They were all coming back to me one at a time with each tiny paper square. As Alison examined the two sides of a piece of clean white typing paper, I could've sworn that I saw a part of my thesis statement from an old college paper on Bartleby the Scrivener.

When the picture was finally finished, a mosaic heart surrounded by a multicolored frame, it was almost ten o'clock. Even Alison realized it was late, so she didn't argue when I told her there wasn't time for reading any books. After I put her to bed I sat down on the couch and thought about those snowflakes I had labored over so many years ago. One thought came to mind: please, please, please let Kate take after her mother.