Healing

The colors seep through four layers of paint. Five. Six. How many more coats will it take? The little wavering scribbles of purple and green wiggle like ghosts across the dining room wall.

Maybe it's a sign. Maybe it's her telling me that these tangles of color aren't meant to be covered up. But - I just can't keep looking at the daily reminder.

"Mom! Pretty!"
The joyous voice echoed up from the dining room and up the stairs where I was saving the laundry.
"Come see, Mama!"
I sighed and bumped the closet door shut with my hip and dropped the rest of the dryer-warm clothes on the bed. Three-year-olds are a lot of fun, but they can exhaust you like nothing else. I turned the corner to find Maggie in the dining room, little fists clamped around handsful of crayons, grinning at the ribbons of color she'd wrapped around three walls.
This was a test, I realized. Multiple choice. Laugh? Cry? I had to laugh. She looked too proud of herself for me to be angry.

I shake my head to clear it of the memory. A week from today would have been her fourth birthday, and it still feels like she's right here, decorating the walls and my life with her rainbow spirit.

Painting over her "art" seemed at first like a step toward healing, but the fact that it isn't working makes me wonder if I'm making an even bigger mistake by erasing the evidence of her endless vivacity from the walls. Truth is, nothing will ever erase her. I'll always see her peanut-butter-and-jelly grin, hear her chortling giggle, wait for the pat-pat-pat of her Hello Kitty-slippered feet coming into my bedroom just before sunrise, and smell the summertime sweetness of her coconut shampoo.

I put down the paintbrush and pick up her box of worn, torn, half-unwrapped and broken crayons. I dig out the purple, and begin to trace.