My mom shaped our delicate souls with unconditional love
The snow was deep, the morning was happy, and the planned activity for the day was the most cheerful. A nearby forest was a place for kids’ games and enchanted stories about hidden treasures. The kids from the entire village gathered their sleds, skis, and simple hunks of plastic (those were the best things to sled down the main hill) and met at the designated place.
I put on my best coat. That white-pinkish fake fur made me look like a tiny cloud of thick mist on skinny legs — and taking my makeshift sledding gear, I ran to meet my friends. We had a blast! My face was red, my lips chapped, and my eyes watered from the frosty air, happy shouting and too much laughing.
When I came home at last, much later than my mom allowed me, I looked like a drenched grey mouse. My lovely fur turned into a dirty wet mass. The look on my mother’s face said more than words could. But she composed herself, closed her eyes, and sighed with a soft smile on her lips.
I understood fully her words many years after. At that time, they only meant that she was not cross with me, “You know I love you, cutie pie. Life is a collection of happy moments, so let us have another one together. I will make your favorite pancakes. How about that?”
My sister and I were sitting at our small square solid-wood dining table covered with a sunflower tablecloth. My mom always made our house look like one of Stephen Darbishire’s summer paintings. We had color sprinkled in each room: handmade pillows, embroidered pictures, and lacy doilies on every surface.
I spilled my tea, dotted the space around my teacup with sugar, and put the cuff of my shirt in jam with no reproachful comments from neither my mom nor my sister. The green tea with ginger, lemon, and honey was my mother’s masterpiece. Accompanied by hot pancakes, straight from the pan, it was the greatest luxury of my childhood. I needed to possess a remarkable skill to finish the previous round and soft delicacy in time to stretch my hand for a new hot one before my sister did. It was a fun little competition. Even nowadays we play this game mostly to amuse each other and to make our mom laugh heartily.
Looking back now, I rarely remember the ruined coat. I remember the pancakes. I remember the warm tea warming my frozen hands. I remember my mother’s smile.
To someone watching from the outside, our life may have appeared marked by loss. My father died when I was only three years old. My mother was twenty-eight, left alone with two little daughters and a future she never expected to face by herself.
Yet somehow, she never allowed sorrow to become the language of our home.
She never pretended pain did not exist. She simply refused to let it become stronger than love.
She understood something I only began to appreciate after becoming a mother myself: children do not build their childhood from perfect days. They build it from moments. From the way someone looks at them after they make a mistake. From laughter around a kitchen table. From muddy coats that matter less than happy memories.
Now, when I watch my own children discover the world, I often think about that winter afternoon.
The coat disappeared long ago. The pancakes are gone. Even the sunflower tablecloth has faded with time.
But the feeling my mother gave me that day has never left.
Perhaps that is what love really does.
It quietly teaches us that different moments pass, but the warmth we receive inside them can remain with us for a lifetime.
Olya Aman 