That’s what she said when she first walked through the door.
“Grandma, can we do messy crafts? Please? We can do messy crafts!” she said as she showed me her new tunic. The outfit was cute but she liked it best because she was allowed to do messy crafts with it.

“Like what?” I asked her. I had no idea what a “messy craft” was.
“Painting!” she said with a huge smile.
I really didn’t have time or energy to get out paints. We had only painted together once or twice.
“Here, I will show you my new pencils!” I told her.
“NO,” she moaned. “Messy crafts! Painting. Can we paint? We have to paint!”
“Here,” I said as I got out my Stabilo Aquarellable pencils. She showed no interest until I quickly added “First you draw with them and then you paint them with water!”
“Yes!” she said with excitement.

She didn’t understand the concept at first but with my instruction, she carefully scribbled a little splotch of red next to blue with the pencils. She scribbled yellow next to blue, red next to yellow, green next to red. When the paper was covered with little bits of scribbled yellow, blue, green, red and orange, we got out the paintbrush. When the brush first touched the blue scratch marks and burst into a wash of color, she looked up at me with absolute wonder and delight.
We turned to the next page and I drew flowers for her to color, which she carefully painted with the damp brush.
I will remember this delightful rainy Sunday with its color-splashed joy.