I have very few loving memories of my mother. I love her, but she has never been able to love me in the same way I love my children. That truth has softened with age, but it’s still there.

My friend Daryl shared a childhood memory on Facebook and challenged the rest of us to reach back into those early years. When I thought about it, the most precious memory I could pull forward was simple — maybe even ordinary — but it has stayed with me all these years: coloring with my mom.

We lived in an old antebellum home at the end of Main Street in Adairsville, Georgia. The front door had a beautiful stained-glass oval window that scattered the sunlight into little jeweled beams. I don’t remember much about that house anymore — it’s been updated by different owners over the years and I believe it’s a rental now — but this one memory remains vivid.

It feels like a faded Polaroid in my mind. No sound, no movement, no sense of temperature or background noise. I’m certain music was playing (my mother always had music playing, and I get that from her), but in my mind’s eye it’s quiet. The sun was setting, and the light spilled through that stained glass, filling the foyer with warm, shifting color.

We were lying together on the polished hardwood floor with a fresh box of Crayola crayons and a stack of new coloring books. Just the two of us. No distractions. The light fell across our pages, painting our simple artwork with a brilliance I can still feel. In that fleeting moment, I was completely, unquestionably happy.

That’s it. That’s the memory. Simple. Ordinary. Precious.

To this day, nothing thrills me quite like opening a brand-new box of Crayola crayons and flipping through the crisp pages of a clean coloring book. It takes me right back to that sacred little sliver of time when my mom and I were simply together.

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Update for Today

Looking back now, almost a decade after I first wrote this, I can’t help but think about what it means to know you are loved. Not hope. Not guess. Not wonder. But to know.

Parents, please make sure your children know without a doubt that they are loved — not just when they’re little, but as they grow into adults. That knowledge carries them through the hardest seasons of life.

I say this because I have far more precious memories with my daddy than with my mom… and he was in prison for 28 years. Think about that. Even behind bars, his love reached me more clearly than hers ever did.

So if you take anything from this memory of crayons and sunlight, let it be this: love loudly, love often, and make sure your children never have to question it.

XOXO, Jani

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