She turns four this month. How did that happen so quickly? Wasn’t I just watching her tiny profile on the ultrasound screen, cradling her in my growing belly and feeling her soft rolls and kicks? When did my baby turn into such a big girl?

All of these thoughts are running through my head while she sits at the kitchen table, eating her cereal and trying to keep her head still so I can finish her braided pigtails. And before I realize what’s happening, one more thought is crossing my mind, what if she had to grow up without me?

It hits me that she is the same age I was when I lost my own mother. I know from experience that if something were to happen to me now, my little daughter would eventually forget almost every memory we’ve shared together. I would become nothing more than a smiling face in our family pictures, a familiar voice speaking behind the camera of all of her baby videos, a faint shadow in the corners of her mind. She might remember the love we shared and the way I made her feel, but she would have trouble actually remembering me.

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Her confident voice interrupts my thoughts, “Mommy, after this, let’s sit on the couch and color together.”

Instinctively, I start to decline this sweet offer—after all, we’re nearing bedtime and we’ve already spent the entire day together. Mommy doesn’t feel like coloring . . . Mommy just wants a break.

No, honey, Mommy has to finish the laundry. No, Mommy just wants to rest on the couch while you color. No, you can color while I check my emails. But I don’t end up saying any of these things. Instead, I smile and I simply say, “Okay.”

She excitedly jumps up from her seat and grabs two coloring books from her drawer, a unicorn one for me and a kitten one for her. We sit on the couch, each with our own box of crayons, and we start to color.

“Mommy, look at her tutu, doesn’t it look so great?” she proudly lifts up the page that she’s been coloring, and I shower her with compliments on the pink tutu. She looks over at my page next, “Mommy, you are doing an amazing job! You are so great at this!” I smile and a memory from many years past pops into my head.

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Suddenly, I’m a little girl with a coloring book in my lap, looking over at my mom’s hands clutching a crayon. I can’t remember much, but one thing I do remember is coloring with my mom. I remember how she would take a marker and outline the borders of the part she was going to color, then shade it perfectly with her crayon. I don’t remember her face, but I do remember watching her coloring next to me. I remember being a little girl and thinking, “Wow, Mommy, you are so great at this!”

My daughter continues to focus intently on keeping her crayons inside the lines, and I spend a moment just watching her—the little blonde braids, her bare feet sticking out of the bottom of her pajama pants, the way her small body fits next to mine on this couch cushion. What an honor to be her mother and to watch her grow up. What a blessing to be able to share these little moments together.

Today, I’m glad I didn’t decline. Today, I’m glad I set aside the temptation to do my own thing and work through my never-ending to-do list. Today, I just needed to tell my daughter, “Okay.”