jmgoyder

It was the Mother’s Day morning tea at kindy. I’d never been to one, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.

All I knew was that Ming was excited about a “poortrit” he’d done of me. “It’s deesplayed,” he said, twinkly-eyed.

Well, five-year-olds are always twinkly, aren’t they? Never devious, surely. Or so I thought.

The day arrived and I wandered through the classroom, searching the walls for an image of myself. Having given me a general tour of the room, Ming had abandoned me to go and play.

We were all given a cup of tea and asked to sit down while the children passed around plates of scones, cake, timtams and twisties.

Once everyone was comfortable, the kids were summoned to sing their Mother’s Day song. By then I’d found Dillan’s and Danny’s mothers and we all got a bit choked up when those twelve five-year-olds sang the last line – “Mum, you aaaarrrre the best.”

Once the performance was over, we were then allowed to roam free once again. Mrs Segal told us all to take special notice of the wonderful portraits drawn by the children.

“Have you found yours yet?” Danny’s mum, Heidi, asked me, grinning strangely.

“It’s a real winner, Julie,” said Dillan’s mother, Sandra, giggling.

“No, I haven’t found it. Ming never stops drawing – he’s become very accurate,” I said, pleased they were impressed.

“Oh, it’s definitely very good,” said Heidi, with what seemed decidedly like a smirk.

“It might not be quite accurate though,” said Sandra.

Were they being sarcastic about my little Picasso? How dare they! But all I managed was a defensive, “Oh, well, he’s really keen, he’s trying hard. Maybe he just didn’t get exactly what he was supposed to do.”

Their laugher still echoes.

Heidi and Sandra took me by each arm and led me back to the portrait wall. Suddenly, several of Ming’s friends surrounded me. One of them whispered to me, “It’s the next one, Mrs Goyder,” then ran off, laughing. I looked around to find Ming behind me, pointing and smiling proudly, but somewhat sheepishly.

I looked back at the drawings, still unable to find me, until Dillan grabbed my hand and took me directly to Ming’s ‘Mum’ portrait.

The shock of it! The freckles were exaggerated, but I put that down to the Ming’s artistic immaturity. The slash of red lipstick was crookedly accurate though.

It was the thick, arrow-like eyebrows that struck me most. They were like backwards ticks. I’d seen Ming do this a thousand times when he was drawing his monsters.

That evening I tactfully complimented Ming on his superb portrait. “You made me look extremely cross,” I mentioned, pretending to be light-hearted.

“You got cross with me.”

“When?”

“When I was ownee two – with the pillow.”

“That was ages ago!” I couldn’t believe he was bringing up the incident when I had banged my head against the wall and told him to put the stuffing back into the pillow.

“Payback,” he said smugly.