How We Forget

Yesterday on the plane I sat next to a young girl, she was probably 2 years old - bright, bubbly and in excellent spirits. When she first boarded, she being kept busy by a very large smarties cookie.

Throughout the flight she watched Peppa Pig on her iPad, played with her toys, ran up and down the aisle of the plane, and generally kept her good-natured parents fairly busy.

Often this sort of behaviour can be tiresome (no matter how much you like children) and patience is often tested. In this instance however, she didn’t bother me, and I tried to work out why. It didn’t take me long to realise: she did not scream, she did not cry out, in fact, she did not speak at all. Apart from the odd grunt or sigh, she remained entirely silent.

She was not shy, she was confident and boisterous and had no reservations about sitting next to me or crawling over to look out my window. When I offered her my pencils and notebook, she took them without hesitation. As she drew, her father and I observed her uninterrupted, complete focus that is rare to witness in anyone (adult or child) in our overstimulated, noisy world.

Her dad explained that she was autistic, something I hadn’t picked up on, and her willingness to interact with strangers and general confidence in an unfamiliar situation seemed unusual.

Being non-verbal, apparently drawing is one of her favourite past times.

A point of focused stillness, and of course, the ability to express and communicate.

Of course, at age 2, she is still learning the mechanics of holding a pencil, of understanding how it marks the paper and follows her movements. But the unwavering dedication to the task at hand showed the instinctive understanding of mark making, the feeling of pencil on paper, of recorded movement and rhythm.

It reminded me of a great anecdote which I stumbled across some time ago:

A 5 year old asked her mother what she did when she went to work every day.

Her mother replied,

“I go to university and teach people how to draw”

Her daughter looked at her mortified, and replied

“How did they forget?”