Chapter Two Hundred and Sixty-One: The February Drawing

He finished the full coastal section in February.

It took from October — the first visit, the first grey-green, the girl's vocabulary — to February to arrive at the full drawing. Four months of the attending and the notation and the returning and the November light concentrating and the January letter from Raymond and the thinking at the drawing board in the short days. Four months from the first honest lines to the complete section.

He drew it in ink on a Thursday morning. He had made all the corrections in pencil first — the east window dropped to forty centimetres from the floor, the width extended to a hundred and forty centimetres, the corner reduced from the storage dimension to the attending dimension, the modest north window inserted at the correct height, the shelf at forty-five centimetres. He had drawn the corrections in pencil across three separate weeks. He had looked at the pencil drawing each morning and found it correct and then found a further correction and made it and looked at it again. He had done this until the Thursday morning in February when he looked at the pencil drawing and found no further correction.

He thought: the drawing is ready.

He drew it in ink with the mapping pen — the same pen he had used for the three-generation house section and the library extension section and the community centre section. The pen that made the single weight line, the honest line without hierarchy, the line that did not know whether it was a wall or a window or a shelf until the drawing made it so.

He drew the east wall first. The east wall with the wide low opening — the forty centimetre sill, the hundred and forty centimetre width, the opening that received the everywhere-at-once coastal light. He drew the sill at forty centimetres and thought about the sea children at their tables with the November sea at the level of their attending faces and the October sea and the January sea and the April sea. He drew the sill as the line that gave the sea to the sea children.

He drew the corner next. The north wall of the corner with the modest window — the forty centimetre sill and the smaller width, the constant north light, the light that stayed through all the months the coastal light changed. He drew the shelf at forty-five centimetres from the floor — the reaching height, the height of the attending hand. He drew the lower ceiling plane of the corner, the ceiling that held the corner children without pressing them, the height the body could trust.

He drew for three hours without stopping. The coastal classroom in section — the wide room and the corner, the east window and the north window, the everywhere-at-once and the stays, the two attending in their two conditions. He drew the limestone floor and the timber roof and the south window at the modest height and the door and the storage that was no longer the corner and the corner that was no longer the storage.

When he finished he put down the pen and looked at the drawing.

The full coastal section. He looked at it for a long time. He looked at the east window and the corner and the relation between them — the wide room giving the sea and the corner giving the held space, the two conditions side by side in the same classroom. He looked at the two windows and thought about Joseph's thirty-one children — the sea children and the corner children and the third he had not accounted for, the children who moved between, the children who needed both the wide attending and the still attending at different times of the day.

He thought: the drawing has a third child.

He had not drawn for the third child. He had drawn the east window for the sea children and the north corner window for the corner children. He had not drawn for the child who moved — who attended to the sea in the morning and retreated to the corner in the afternoon, who needed the everywhere-at-once and the stays at different hours, the child whose attending was not fixed but seasonal within the day.

He thought: Joseph's classroom has three kinds of attendance. I have drawn two.

He sat with this for a long time. He looked at the section and thought about the third child. He thought about the movement from the east window to the corner — the crossing of the wide room, the transition between the two attendings. He thought about the threshold between the wide attending and the still attending, the space through which the third child passed in making the transition.

He thought: the threshold is a condition. The threshold needs a drawing.

He picked up the pencil. He drew lightly — the pencil drawing, the thinking drawing, not the ink drawing, the beginning. He drew a low bench along the south wall between the east window and the corner. A bench at thirty-five centimetres — the sitting height, the height of the body at rest between two attendings. A bench with the south window above it at the correct height — the south light entering at the height of the sitting body, the light for the body in transition.

He drew the bench as the threshold condition — the place between the wide attending and the still attending, the place the third child occupied in moving between them. Not the east window and not the corner but the south bench: the resting place, the transitional space, the attended pause.

He thought: the third child needs a bench.

He wrote in the pocket notebook: the third child — moves between the wide attending and the still attending. Needs the threshold. The south bench at thirty-five centimetres: the resting place between the two conditions. The coastal section now has three drawings: the east window, the corner, and the bench. The three attending conditions of Joseph's thirty-one children.

He pinned the ink section to the drawing board above the pencil bench study. He stood back and looked at both.

He thought about writing to Joseph. He thought about the letter to Joseph — the section complete and the bench study begun, the two attending found and the third attending emerging. He thought about the letter as the practice asking the teacher whether the third attending was correct: whether the moving child existed, whether the bench condition was the right answer to the threshold.

He wrote to Joseph that evening: the section is complete. I have drawn the east window and the corner — the sea children and the corner children. But I believe there is a third attending. The child who moves between the two. The child who needs the south bench between the east window and the corner — the resting place, the transition, the pause between the wide attending and the still. Is this child in your classroom? I have drawn the bench in pencil. I will wait for your answer before drawing it in ink.

He sealed the letter and put it beside the section drawing and the bench study.

He wrote in the pocket notebook: letter to Joseph — the third child, the south bench, the threshold attending. Waiting for the answer before the ink. The drawing is not complete until the correspondent confirms it.

He was glad.

End of Chapter Two Hundred and Sixty-One