Is it too late to start something new?
The Paint Box in the Shoebox
Signor Aldo Ferri delivered the post in Speranza for thirty-eight years. He knew every letterbox, every dog, every loose cobble on Via dell’Orologio, and every household that still received handwritten letters, which by the end was only four. When he retired, the village gave him a cake, a pen engraved with his name, and a long, empty Monday.
On the first Monday of November, eight months into his retirement, he came into La Pagina che Fa le Fusa carrying a shoebox under his arm the way he used to carry registered parcels: carefully, as though it might go off.
“Signora Moira,” he said, setting it on the counter. “I need your opinion. And possibly a cup of something.”
Inside the shoebox, wrapped in a yellowed copy of the regional newspaper from 1986, was a tin paint box. Twelve little pans of colour, unbroken, still with their paper labels. A brush with its bristles perfect. Not a single fingerprint.
“I bought it in Florence when I was twenty-nine,” said Aldo. “I was going to learn to paint. Then my daughter was born, and then the round got longer, and then there was the roof, and then there was always something. Yesterday I found it in the wardrobe.” He cleared his throat. “I am sixty-seven. My hands shake a little in the mornings. Is it ridiculous?”
On the counter, Ashwaganda leaned over the shoebox and sniffed the 1986 newspaper with great professional interest.
The Fear of Being a Beginner
Moira put the kettle on and took down a jar of dried rosehips, bright as sealing wax, and another of dried apple rings.
“It isn’t ridiculous,” she said. “But let me guess what you’re really afraid of. It isn’t the painting. It’s being bad at it, in public, at your age.”
Aldo looked at her the way people look at someone who has read a letter addressed to them. “For thirty-eight years I was good at something,” he said. “I never lost a parcel. Not one. Now I’ll be an old man making brown puddles.”
“Everyone’s first watercolours are brown puddles,” said Moira. “Even the famous ones. Especially the famous ones, I suspect. The only difference between a beginner of twenty and a beginner of sixty-seven is that the one of sixty-seven usually knows how to be patient.”
She poured the water over the rosehips and apple, and the shop filled with a smell like a warm orchard.
“I read once,” she went on, “that researchers who study ageing are quite interested in older adults who take up something new: an instrument, a language, a craft. It seems that staying curious and keeping the mind engaged is good company for later life, and that the social side of it, a class, a group, someone to show your work to, matters too. I won’t promise you that painting will keep you young. But I’ve never met anyone who regretted starting.”
The First Brushstroke
Moira cleared the little table by the window, found a jam jar for water and a sheet of thick paper left over from the shop’s Christmas cards, and set everything out.
“Now?” said Aldo, alarmed. “Here?”
“The tin has waited thirty-eight years,” said Moira. “I don’t think it should wait for Tuesday.”
Aldo sat. He opened the tin. The little pans of colour cracked faintly as he wet them, like ice on a puddle in the morning. He looked out of the window at the view he had walked past ten thousand times: the clock tower, the bakery’s striped awning, the roofs going down the hill in orange steps.
He painted the sky first. It ran. He swore under his breath in the dialect of his grandfather. He painted the clock tower. It leaned, like a man who has had one glass too many at a wedding. He painted the roofs, and they merged with the sky into something that was, without question, a brown puddle.
Toe, who had been asleep on a stack of atlases, woke, stretched, walked across the table and planted one white paw firmly in the corner of the wet painting. Then he sat down beside it, looking pleased with himself.
Aldo stared at the small grey paw print among the orange roofs. Then he began to laugh, a real laugh, the kind that comes up from somewhere around the belt.
“It’s signed,” he said. “My first painting, and it’s already signed by the critic.”
What Retirement Is For
They drank the tea while the painting dried, the rosehip tart and bright, the apple soft beneath it. Ashwaganda inspected the jam jar of muddy water and decided it was not for him.
“You know what I’ve noticed?” said Moira. “When people retire, they talk about the end of their working life as if it were the end of being useful. But being useful and being a beginner aren’t opposites. You spent thirty-eight years carrying other people’s news. Perhaps now it’s time to make a little news of your own.”
“Brown news,” said Aldo.
“Brown news for a month. Then a little less brown. A few tips, if you like: paint something small, every day if you can, even for ten minutes. Don’t throw anything away, because in three months you’ll want to see how far you’ve come. And find a few people to paint with. The parish hall has a Thursday group, and I happen to know they need someone who can carry chairs.”
Aldo looked at the painting. The clock tower still leaned. The sky was still a puddle. But there, in the bottom corner, was a window with a yellow light in it, and he had painted that light without thinking, and it was, unmistakably, the light of the bookshop.
“May I leave it here?” he asked. “To dry. And because I’d like someone to see it who will be kind.”
Moira pinned it above the counter, beside the shop’s licence and a postcard from Sydney. The paw print showed nicely.
Thursday
On Thursday evening, Aldo Ferri walked down Via dell’Orologio with his tin under his arm, no longer in a shoebox. He carried six chairs for the painting group at the parish hall and made, by his own account, three more brown puddles and one small, slightly crooked lemon that a retired schoolteacher called “honestly rather good”.
On Friday he brought the lemon to the bookshop. Moira pinned it next to the first painting. Ashwaganda looked at it for a long time, which from him is the highest praise available.
Moira’s Reflection
We tell ourselves it’s too late because the alternative is frightening: being a beginner again, slow and clumsy, while others watch. But the paint box doesn’t know how old we are. The paper doesn’t mind. The only thing that really grows too late is the excuse, and it grows heavier every year we carry it. A brown puddle on a Monday is worth more than a perfect painting that waits in a wardrobe for thirty-eight years.
Is there a paint box waiting in your wardrobe, something you always meant to start? What would your first brown puddle be? Tell us in the comments.
A Cup for This Story
Moira’s Beginner’s Orchard Tea:
- 1 heaped teaspoon of dried rosehips, lightly crushed
- 3 or 4 dried apple rings, torn into pieces
- A small piece of cinnamon stick
- 250 ml of freshly boiled water
- Steep covered for 8 minutes, strain, and sip while something new dries on the table
Herbal teas are a comforting ritual, not medicine. If you are pregnant, have allergies or take medication, check with a health professional first.
Press Play and Stay a While
If you’re not quite ready to leave the bookshop, here is the song of Speranza to keep you company while your tea cools.
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