“I can’t stay in this house one more minute,” I said to my mother while wearing a neck brace after a procedure on the nerves in the surgical region of my spine in January 2016.

“Where do you want to go?” My mother asked.

“We’ve been saying for a while that we wanted to try one of those sip and paint events,” I replied.

I searched Groupon and found one in Manhattan that night and we were off.

We didn’t drink but we laughed and painted. At the end of the night, we both stared our canvases with pride. Our smiles weren’t because we were glad to discover that we weren’t half bad painters. Rather it was because, as usual, we turned a frightening and painful situation, like an procedure due to my chronic illness, into a bonding experience and a cherished memory.

When I saw this ugly Christmas shirt with the late Bob Ross on it, the memory of that night out with my mother came flooding back. I ordered it and went downstairs to look at my painting. Then, I turned to stare at my mother’s painting . Last year after my mother passed away, I asked my father for her painting and he said no. Three months later, he gave it to me as my Christmas present.

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