I remember constructing one of my favorite pieces of art, The Dysfunctional Pencil Family, around this time of year, a time of year when the best and worst traits of a family pop up. Like in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, we can wish each other Merry Christmas and turn right around and say Bah Humbug in the same sentence. Internal friction can flow through every little pencil in a family, tall or short, number 2 or number 4, wearing out our points as we put our lines and circles down together.
When I was a kid, I had trouble letting go of small pencils. I was the kind of kid who bonded with the pencil the more I used it, but the more I used it the smaller it got. I got comfortable with it at the same time I was letting go of it. It’s part of the beautiful paradox of life and part of the dysfunction of being part of a pencil family. When I first learned how to use pencils, I would walk around with a worn-out pencil in my hand for hours without being able to make a decision whether to let it go or keep it. I got close to my pencils, and finally, after carrying a useless pencil around, I would silently say goodbye and let it slip out of my hand to the floor in the hallway at school.
The pencils at the bottom of The Dysfunctional Pencil Family came from a big bag of broken pencils I collected from the hallways at the middle school where I taught. It was as if there was a little graveyard of unfinished homework all around me waiting to be finished if only the pencils could find their way home, and they have become kind of a trademark in my work.
I think one of the things that is so beautiful about pencils, and something that we can’t find in humans, is that pencils have an eraser that allows us to scratch away our mistakes. Erasers give us a do-over. They help us put the past behind us. Wouldn’t it be cool if we humans had a built-in eraser, and could just flip each other over and erase the parts we have trouble living with?
For some of us, we do. He is called Jesus. He is our eraser guy, our do-over. He is the guy God gave us at Christmas, a giant pencil of a man, who by his life example showed us how to flip ourselves over, rub out the mistakes and bloopers, and make all our marks new and snowy fresh. That Eraser Guy is always there in our dysfunctional pencil family, and all we have to do (and here’s the rub) is the flipping.
In my drawing pictured here, I tried to depict that same sense of renewal. Everything in the piece is rather happy, but there are some menacing details floating around that hamper the four little family members from relaxing into the white, puffy atmosphere of the handmade paper. High up in one corner there is a big star shedding brightness on their future, but chaos is lurking in a row of broken pencils at the bottom, like a pit of grass spears, which seems to threaten the balance of the stick people family.
I’ve heard it said that all families are dysfunctional to some degree. I was reminded of this one time when a small child walked past my piece and said excitedly, “Look! There’s the Dysfunctional Pencil Family!” It was as if she had found her own family again and was excited to see them no matter how crazy they were. It was also a reminder that we all come from different parts of the hallway and are looking for our way back home.
Back home to Jesus. We get there by putting down our best marks with the broken dysfunctional pencils that we are. We get there by being flipped over by our own families and the world, and then allowing ourselves to be rubbed clean by The Do-Over Man. Sometimes, the rubbing is a bit painful, but the new drawing is flawless.