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Old Man with Paper Cranes

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gouache paint, colored pencil

I really wanted to make something society doesn't always label as "beautiful" look beautiful in his own way. I made sure to make his face perfectly asymmetrical- crooked nose, one ear folds more than the other, etc. There are also no two parallel lines or aligning angles in this piece (to accentuate the 'cooky'). This is probably one of the first pieces of art I did that I felt emotionally attached to, and would never give away. This character inspired a short story about a grumpy old man whose heart melts upon meeting a little girl:


RED ROSES

There were three things that Old Grump Leonard was completely sure of. One, all children were obnoxious. Two, he hated anyone who touched his beautiful red roses, especially that woman with the silver braid. Three, he loved that woman with the silver braid more than all the roses in the world. She lived a few houses down from him, and every day, weather permitting, she would take a walk, her eyes glowing each time she saw his roses. When he first met her a few summers ago, a bud was leaning over his fence, and she was gently cupping it underneath her nose, her straw hat shading her and the rose like a beach umbrella. He grumbled at her to stop touching his flowers. As if he had just kindly said hello, she looked up at him, a giggle in here eyes. He almost smiled at her. She asked if she could keep one. As if returning from a trance, he blinked a few times and grumbled a rough "No!" then quickly limped inside. He looked at her through the window, watched her turning away. Her hat flopped and her braid swayed as she left, humming a tune to herself.
Every time she saw him, she asked, “How about today?” and every time he would grumble “No!” fearing what expectations a single rose could bring. As time went on, she kept asking, and each time, the anger in his voice was just a little less genuine.
So he led a fairly uneventful life. But one night, something very eventful and life changing happened to Old Grump Leonard.
He awoke in the middle of the night to barking, and a waterfall of rain outside the window. An impatient man, Leonard didn’t hesitate to investigate.
Through the rain’s haze, he saw a little white dog barking and running frantically back and forth by the lake behind his house. As he neared, his flashlight shone on a little girl's head bobbing in the water. Her little mouth gasped for air, but swallowed water. Without regard for rain boots or his bad knee, gray, Old Grump Leonard jumped in the water and pulled that little girl out. She wore a red shirt, pants, and shoes, like his roses. Almost immediately after he plopped the little girl on land, a woman in a yellow jacket came running towards them as the dog barked a signal.
“Lydia! There you are! Oh my goodness!” she hugged and kissed the girl tightly, and thanked Leonard profusely, before she huddled away with the girl, the little white dog trailing behind.
The thing about saving a child is that it is much like feeding a dog: they keep coming back to you.
A few days after that rainy night, the little girl had left cookies on the old grump's doorstep with thank you note. Ignoring the platter of sugar, he went to tend to his roses: pruning, spraying, peeling dead petals, and searching for bugs.
“Did you get my cookies?” Leonard turned to the high pitched voice. The little girl stood behind him in a red dress. How had she walked so quietly?
“Yes. Thank you.” He turned back to the roses.
“Did you eat them yet?”
“No. I do not eat sugar before lunch.” There was a pause.
“I’m Lydia. Do you remember me?” She asked.
“You shouldn’t have been out late.”
She swung around him to get a closer look at the rose he was tending. She inched up on her tiptoes and inched her nose to it, forcing Leonard to back away to conserve his personal space.
“Alright, that’s enough. Go home and do your homework.” His voice was gruff.
“I have no homework, it’s summer!” she clapped.
He huffed, trying to ignore her. She asked more questions. Why were his roses different from roses in the store? How long does it take for a bud to bloom? Why doesn't he have more colors? And at first, he would respond curtly, annoyed, in a grumble. But the more she asked, the less curt his answers became, and the less grumbling his voice sounded. He spoke about the roses, and the little girl listened intently as her dog lay down under the shade of the bushes.
So it became a pattern. Almost everyday the little girl came, dressed like his roses, her little dog trailing like a little cloud. She asked questions and hovered closer than socially acceptable. But Leonard would talk with her, something he had rarely done regularly with a person before. He wondered, but never asked, about her mother who had let her escape in the middle of the night weeks ago, and let a child spend her summer days with a cranky old man. He often worried if the woman neglected Lydia. But one day he looked up from his yard, and saw the young woman’s face in the window across the street watching them. Unaccusingly, but watchfully.
And the woman with the silver braid still passed by his garden almost every day, her straw hat flapping in the wind.
“How about today?” she would ask, much less frequently than before. Leonard figured she was too intrigued by his new friend. And that he seemed to have one.
He wouldn’t grumble his usual, “No!” anymore, but he would shake his head quietly. Once Lydia protested, and he shot her such a look of anxiety that she didn’t bring it up again. Instead, Lydia took to patting him encouragingly on the arm whenever the woman walked by.
Eventually he let Lydia do some work in his garden, and even gave her some of his seeds so she could grow her own rose in a pot.
One day in particular, the woman with the silver braid passed by, Leonard and Lydia were fertilizing the roses. He looked up at just the moment to catch those forest-green eyes. She smiled widely at him, and, surprising himself, Leonard actually smiled back. Her eyebrows raised happily, and she kept walking. Lydia giggled.
Again and again Leonard replayed that moment in his head. He remembered her face, the wrinkles by her eyes and lips, footprints of many smiles. He imagined his relaxed frown lines just as pronounced as her smiling wrinkles.
“You know, Mr. Leonard,” Lydia said after the woman had passed, “summer’s almost over, and it’ll be too cold for your roses to be out, and that lady might not want to come by here anymore if there aren’t any roses to look at.”
He almost smiled. She was telling him to make a move.
School began again. The woman with the silver braid took walks less often, and instead of her floppy hat she wore a multicolored shawl. Lydia came to the garden on the weekends, each time asking, “Did you talk to her yet?”
Leonard knew soon that it would be too cold to work in the garden, too cold for walks, and too cold for roses to be blooming. It had been a week since he’d last seen her walking. That was strange. Absent mindedly touching his roses, he watched down the sidewalk for her, waiting. Had it gotten too cold for her to take walks anymore? He lifted the collar on his coat.
For over a week he waited impatiently, his mind on the sidewalk.
Finally, she came: a splash of color. As she walked by, she gazed at his rose bushes, searching for blooms. She didn't see any now. They stood there a moment, on opposite ends of the roses. Wordlessly he leaned to cut a rose, the last bloom, and held it out to her.
“How about today?” he asked.
Her green eyes lit up with her grin. Surprising himself, Leonard smiled back. She took the flower, and held out her arm. He linked his arm in hers, and they went out for a walk.
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amorxoxo's avatar
This turned out really cool!! I remember when you started working on this! :)