Mary was recovering in bed for many weeks. I have known her for years and she had not ever tried her hand at painting, except for painting walls. I surprised her when I came into her room. I told her I had a big piece of cardboard and big brushes and paints. “Would you like to paint?”

“Well, I guess so,” she replied cooperatively. “You can’t do it wrong.”

I spread a plastic garbage bag over her sheet and I held the cardboard. She picked up the big brush and started painting with red. She picked up another brush with yellow in it and watched things change from red to orange. More colors appeared as she experimented. When she was finished, we looked at it from all directions and our imaginations went wild. We hung it on her wall.