A Forgotten Connection
When I was a little kid, I used to make crayon drawings for everyone in our building — silly doodles of flowers, houses, or smiling suns. I’d slip them under doors, hoping to make people smile.
But there was one door that never opened, one neighbor who never said thank you or left a note in return — the quiet lady upstairs.
I remember thinking, as a child, that she probably threw them away. After all, she never smiled. Never waved.
But now, standing there, staring at dozens of my old drawings, carefully framed and preserved, I realized I had been wrong.
Not only had she kept them — she had turned them into her world.
Each picture had a date written in small, neat handwriting at the bottom corner. Some even had little notes beside them — things like “A cheerful sun — March 1989” or “Blue flowers, my favorite.”
I felt my throat tighten.
She had remembered.
She had seen me, even when I thought she hadn’t.
