My mother often told me, “Don’t sit on Grandpa’s lap.” I never understood why. One day, I didn’t listen to her and sat down anyway. Grandpa smiled, leaned close to my ear, and whispered, “Can you come sleep beside me tonight?”

“Just don’t sit on his lap!”

Grandpa and I look at each other.

Then we both burst out laughing.

And somehow, every single year, I understand my mother’s old warning a little better.

She wasn’t trying to keep me away from my grandfather.

She was trying to protect the two people she loved most from a pain she wasn’t ready to explain.

Sometimes children hear a warning and think,

“Why won’t they let me do this?”

But years later, we understand.

Sometimes a mother’s strangest rules are simply love wearing a frightened face.

And sometimes the memories we think will be our last…

become the memories we carry for the rest of our lives.