Parents Declutter Me Right Out of Existence
Her hugs felt warm, soft, and wonderfully reassuring.
"Eddie, you have an incredible sense of color," Ms. Stone always told me.
After I won first place in the city's children's art competition, she presented me with a flat metal case. When I lifted the lid, I was met with a rainbow—48 watercolor markers lined up like soldiers in brilliant uniforms.
They were colorful and beautiful, but to my parents, they might as well have been illegal.
If I took them home, Dad would call them excessive, and Mom would dismiss them as visual clutter. To keep the peace, I never brought them through the door.