The rest of the world could wait.

For three hours, nothing mattered except the two of us sitting barefoot in the kitchen, making pancakes, spilling syrup, laughing at our terrible shapes, and enjoying the kind of ordinary moments that somehow become the memories you carry forever.

Then, one rainy Saturday when Mabel was four, she came home from preschool carrying two plastic beaded bracelets she had made herself.

One was tiny.

The other was much too large.

“I made matching ones!” she announced proudly.