She had received harsh criticism from art teachers in the past. But the time and effort my wife put into this gift was an obvious and gorgeous metaphor for her love for me
My wife is amazing at a lot of things: spotting a typo from 10 paces, retaining obscure facts about medieval English food customs and, as seems almost obligatory these days, making sourdough bread. The one thing she is absolutely awful at, however, is art. Back in the 80s, her art teacher wrote in her end-of-year report: “Claire has a tendency to be highly experimental – which I would praise, were it not for the fact that her examination pieces were experiments which appeared to have gone very badly wrong.”
I tell you this not in order to publicly shame her – how could I, as the owner of a D-grade German O-level? – but to highlight how wonderful it was when, in 1996, on our first wedding anniversary, AKA our “paper” anniversary, she presented me with a papier-mache heart that she had sculpted with her own fair hands.
