Dear Marshall,
I’m going to miss so many things about your childhood, things you won’t remember, things you’ll probably never understand my attachment to. Take this coloring book, for example.
It is called The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher. It was created from the story by Beatrix Potter. Not that it matters who wrote it. We never read it. We didn’t have the chance. You treated it like all of your other books, which is to say roughly, and most of the pages are long gone. A few linger, and on these you color with your “clee-oo” (crayons).
It is your very first coloring book. You haven’t learned yet to color sections (I colored the green part shown in the picture and, for the record, not with that crayon). You just draw random lines using random colors. That’s all you want out of coloring right now. You have no artistic plan, no standard by which you’re compelled to judge your work. You just like to hold crayons, to smell them, and to make marks in your special book. That is so wonderful.
The everyday things you have and the everyday things you do are what make my every day colorful.
Love,
Mom