Coloring pages

There is a tradition in my human family of the children asking the mother for coloring pages, and then the mother (FarmWife) taking her fat black sharpie and outlining some sort of pastoral scene of an animal mother and child—the young one napping sweetly upon her parent's paws, or gamboling joyfully among the delicate blossoms of a verdant meadow. They may be horse coloring pages, kitten coloring pages, raccoon coloring pages, mouse coloring pages, gazelle coloring pages, or bushbaby coloring pages, but they all follow this pattern. Mother wolf watches baby wolf leap at a leaf. Mother doe watches baby fawn race through the orchard. Mother elephant sleeps while baby elephant embraces her with his trunk. Mother lemur clutches baby lemur to her chest. Etcetera, etcetera.

Well, this week FarmHusband paid FarmWife the supreme compliment of parodying her work—he offered HER a coloring page, that she might join in the family fun of drawing within the lines, and it artfully illustrated a mother and child. In this case, mother donkey is royally pissed to find her little boy smoking a cigarette.

"I'd be that mad," FarmWife told her daughters, "if that were you." And so FarmHusband's creation became both an activity and a lesson, and a good time was had by all.

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