My mom has always loved to color, and when I was six years old she bought a giant T'was the Night Before Christmas coloring book.
I remember coloring with her and always being amazed at how beautiful her pages turned out. You can faintly see in the lower right hand corner of this picture that mom colored it in 1979.
Although it was 44 years ago, I remember coloring this picture of ma and pa settling down for a long winter's nap that mom and I colored together in 1978. I recall working so hard to make my coloring as nice as hers. In the lower left hand corner, if you look carefully, you'll see on the top side of the turquoise circle a spot where I messed up and colored outside the line. I was so disappointed in myself, but mom reassured me that it was okay and that she would help me fix it so that it wasn't very noticeable. As I've reflected on that memory as an adult, I've appreciated the lesson that she taught that day - sometimes we mess up, but it's okay. There are things we can do to lessen the impact of mistakes made. This picture, even with its imperfection, is now my favorite in the book because of the memory and lesson associated with it.
Over the years my mom encouraged family members to color in her giant coloring book, and to sign their name and print the year on the page they colored. Several cousins and grandchildren contributed to its now colorful pages. As far as I can tell, the last time that anyone colored in it was in 1997, but the book was always a treasured keepsake of mom's.
In 2002, my parents separated and divorced. Mom moved to Washington with very few of her belongings and many of her things got moved around and ended up in storage. Several years later, my sister and I cleaned out a storage unit that had many of our parents' things in it. When I found the beloved coloring book, it was tattered and torn, but I couldn't bring myself to throw it out.
I hung onto it for several years, wanting to do something to preserve it, but not sure how. Finally, last year, I decided that it wasn't the book itself, but the memories that needed to be preserved. In this miraculous age of digital photography, I was able to take photos of each page and have them made into a book that turned out even better than I'd hoped. Mom was visiting us in San Antonio for Christmas, so we got to be with her when she opened it. It was truly a joyous moment to relive those memories with her as she looked through the book.
This book represents so much to me: Mom's love of coloring, time spent coloring with her, her patience with my imperfect efforts, family gatherings at the holidays, holiday traditions and treasured keepsakes. Mom's giant coloring book has definitely been a gift that keeps on giving.
