I couldn't sleep.
Not from excitement, not from nerves—but from something warmer.
Love, maybe.Gratitude that spilled out of my chest and refused to quiet down.I kept thinking about the paper. About them. About how they looked at me when they gave it to me.
It was like being wrapped in light.
And I knew what I had to do.
I slipped out of bed while the hearth still whispered its last embers.
The paper lay in its box, undisturbed and waiting. I opened it like I was touching something alive. Something sacred.
I chose one sheet. Just one.
And I began.
I painted my mother first.
Her eyes—not just their shape, but the way they crinkle at the corners when she smiles.Her hands—strong from kneading dough, soft from stroking my hair.I painted the ribbon she always wears, slightly faded, always clean.
Then Pa.
The furrow between his brows, deeper when he thinks I'm not watching.The quiet steadiness in his shoulders.The way his beard catches flecks of ash from the forge.
I didn't paint them standing proud like heroes in a storybook.
I painted them as I saw them:Sitting beside the hearth, shoulder to shoulder. Her hand resting on his. A pot gently steaming behind them. His knife and her thread beside them. Their eyes, full of a love they don't always speak aloud.
My brush moved slower as the night deepened.Not because I didn't know what to do——but because I didn't want it to end.
When I finally stopped, the world outside the window was turning gray-blue.
I held the painting in my hands, lightheaded and quiet.
It didn't feel like something I had made. It felt like something that had been waiting inside me, asking to come out.
And now… there it was.
I stared at it for a long time.
Not because I doubted it—but because it was the first time I'd painted something that made me feel something just by looking at it.
It looked like them.
But more than that… it felt like them.
Warm. Solid. Home.
I let it dry near the coals, careful not to let even the smallest ember touch it.
Then I tucked it between two cloths and placed it in my wooden box—ready for tomorrow.
I didn't want thanks.I didn't want praise.
I just wanted them to see.
To see how much they meant to me.To know, in color and shape and shadow, how they lived inside my heart.
I curled up under my blanket as the birds began to sing.
And before sleep took me, one last thought floated through my mind:
If this is what it means to love, then I'll keep painting for the rest of my life.