18940912 15:59:20

18940912 15:59:20

MK-S-4798

Richard kept his nose pointed slightly downwards to the table so that he didn't allow the direct light of the candle flame to blind his vision. All the while, he attentively held the crayon so its end would balance between the flame and twirled it between his fingers so that he could keep the bubble of melted wax collected.
"Don't let too much melt. Be patient and do it in small parts every time." Melissa kept her focus attentively upon her son throughout this exercise.
"Okay, momma. I know."
Despite saying as much, Richard continued to hold the crayon in the flame, and delighted to watch the solid become liquid before his eyes. He loved the smell of melted wax which now filled the dining room. When he heard his father begin to walk up, he finally removed the crayon and dabbed it onto the paper. Without checking to see how the paper absorbed the brown wax, he dashed away from his chair and rushed to greet him.
"Dad! You should see it, Mom's showing me how to draw mountains that really look like they are rocks, it's amazing!"
"Ha ha, is that so? Let me see."
Carbondale walked over to the table in Richard's wake and looked over his son's shoulder to see his work in progress. The child pointed to the space of white paper which had a brown boundary and one circular dab of the same color within it.
"This is gonna be the mountain, see? I'm drawing the Rocky Mountains. I gotta do it for school. It's really fun!"
"The Rockies, eh? Looking good." Carbondale gave his praise in a lazy voice while feeling the surface of the hardened dot of wax on the paper. He pinched his fingers afterward and felt how the residual wax changed their texture.
"It does look wonderful. I wanna go there some day. I wanna see mountains in person. It would be so much better than how it is here. How it's all flat here."
"Oh, Richard. Heh, if my Dad were to hear you say those things-"
"Oh don't you start about that." Melissa said this with a smirk. Carbondale didn't check her physical bearing nor pay attention to the command itself, but rather felt more compelled to say something after having her give that half hearted warning.
"Richard, listen. You'll go places, sure. You'll be able to go lots of places in this world. And when you do, you'll see that what we got here is pretty good too. Trust me on this. When I was your age.. when I was a baby, see, us folks going to the Rockies at that time woulda been bad. The States said that we weren't citizens. My Dad... Granpda, he'd remind me about this all the time. He never let that go.  I doubt he's the only one who still hangs on. So if you wanna see mountains, we can see mountains some day, sure. But there's more mountains than the Rockies, right?"
"Um, OK Dad. I hope we go see mountains soon."
"Hm, maybe we will."