When I was little, I dreaded art class.

I hated the walls of the basement, I hated the brushes and ink and markers, and I hated the paint-stained sink.

I hated how my colours would look murky and bland, and how my awkward brushstrokes looked like child’s play instead of the next Van Gogh painting.

When I was little, I hated many things, but when Wednesday night rolled around, I hated that the most.

From an outsider’s perspective, it wasn’t the hell I thought it was. It was a small, single-teacher class, hidden away in the basement of the teacher’s home. The teacher and most of the kids attending were East Asian and spoke fluent Mandarin. The teacher primarily spoke in sentences pieced together from Mandarin and broken English, coupled with pet names and giggles. I would have to pick up words from her sentences and try to understand them, but as a second-generation kid, I didn’t know most of the fancy art terms she was using in Mandarin.
Worse, as an introvert with no self-confidence, I didn’t bother asking for their English translations.

The way the class worked was unique. You would enter the house without ringing the doorbell to prevent interrupting the course. Then, you would travel awkwardly through the place, briefly making eye contact with the family’s husband before heading down the stairs, because he was always making dinner before class. If you were lucky enough, you might make eye contact with the family’s dog instead, sparing you from the uncomfortable greetings with the husband. Once downstairs, you would set up your station alone, gathering materials from here and there like a boring game of Where’s Waldo? except there is no Waldo and you are trying to find your easel that teleported from the left side of the classroom to the right. After finding each needed piece of equipment (including the tubes of paint that had disappeared and been replaced with a creepy doll used for modelling purposes), you would find your art piece and work alone. Very independent and easy for a single teacher to manage.

As a child, I must have missed out on this critical information. I would enter, but by ringing the doorbell instead of walking in normally. I’d awkwardly sit down, and fiddle with my fingers instead of finding my work. I would sit there for half of the class, waiting to be instructed, watching as the teacher fluttered from student to student, commenting on their work. I would freeze up when the teacher would come up to me, asking disappointedly why I hadn’t done anything. “I didn’t know what do to,” I would whisper under my breath. “Why didn’t you ask?” She’d question. I had the sense she hated my guts; every piece and part of me.

On the rare chance that I did find my work and knew what I was doing, I never understood what was wrong with my art, and why the teacher wouldn’t put it up on the walls like the other kids. She would look at me and say, “Ai yah, Monica, you gotta fix this part. The side should be a darker shade, you see?” and I would say, “Okay.” and proceed to stare at my work, confused on why it should be like so. My brushes were not extensions of my hands, unlike the other kids, who just seemed to be magically talented prodigies with their paintings and oil pastels. I would watch as the teacher stopped the class and held up a piece of work, explaining that this is how our end product should look like. I would stare back down at my paper, and be unable to find that end product within my own piece.

After a few years of watching and comparing, I dropped the class and never saw the teacher again.

A few weeks ago, my mother came up to me with an interesting proposition. I had been wanting to drop a program I was in for the longest while, and she said she would allow it if I returned to art class; back to the basement in someone’s home and back to my childhood. I agreed to the proposition.

When I first entered, it was the similarities that stood out most: the same age range of children I used to be with, the same teacher, and even the same dog, who I did make eye contact before with heading down. Even the husband was still making dinner at the same time; the aroma was the same range of spices.

The only thing that changed was me and the home I was in. The teacher had moved houses; the white hospital-like walls of the basement were blinding.

The teacher led me around for my first lesson, helping me set up my station and start my piece. I understood then that I was to do this alone each time I entered, and ever since, I have set up my station alone. I had easily solved the first problem I had when I was a kid.

I would glance up every once and a while when painting, pausing the music in my earbuds to hear what the teacher was saying. Sometimes it was critiques for me, other times she was talking with someone else. I could point out the children that she favoured, the magically talented prodigies, and the kids that were younger me, confused and misunderstood. It was like watching myself through someone else’s lenses, watching them mess up and beat themselves over it. I watched as the teacher guided them through their mistakes and talked to them just like how she used to talk to me, fluent Mandarin and broken English, coupled with strange art terms I had never heard before.

Through these rough lenses, I noticed something childhood me never noticed.

Art class wasn’t that bad.

I was just an insecure child, afraid to step out of the bubble that I placed for myself. I was sensitive to criticism, so every word she said felt like an attack to me and only me, but in truth, that was just her teaching style. I was not hated as a kid, and messing up was normal for a child who had never painted before. It wasn’t something wrong with me, nor was there something special about the magically talented prodigies.

All my hate disbanded as I stared up at the blanket of night outside the teacher’s house. There was a sense of closure for my younger self, who would tear up silently in the bathroom after being criticized. There was a window for current me, to grow and learn how to paint like I never could before; a closing of a chapter that long needed closing, and a beginning that was begging to be started.

When the next Wednesday night rolled around, I wasn’t in a pool of anxious butterflies. My younger self would have been proud.