I think it was in the first or second grade that we first did finger painting. Albert did a tree. It looked like the big elm tree out the window. Sort of looked like a hand, with the wrist as the trunk and the fingers as the limbs. I looked at his painting and I could see the tree. I could never make anything that looked like anything, but Albert could. I thought it was a good tree.

 

The teacher said it wasn't a tree. She wiped out his tree and made this thing that looked like a lollipop. She said that was a tree. Albert said it wasn't a tree, she said it was a tree. He said it wasn't any tree he wanted to make. She told him to make a tree like she had showed him. She then wiped out her tree and Albert made a lollipop and called it a tree.

 

I told her it wasn't a tree, told her to look out the window. She told me it wasn't any of my business. I pleaded with her to just look out the window. I was either sent to the principal's office or made to sit in the corner. I don't remember. I don't know. I always spent a lot of time in both places.

 

Albert never did any Art he didn't have to do. When it came to Art or Music, in later years, he took Music.

 

When he was drafted to go to Vietnam, he went to Canada. When his name appeared in the paper as being pardoned by the president, I asked someone from his family when he was coming back. I was told he thought there was no reason for him to come back. When I asked what he was doing in Canada all these years, I was told he was an artist.

 

As I write this now, it makes me cry. And I wonder why. Could it be joy for his long delayed happiness, sadness for his pleasure so long denied or maybe just my shame as an American?