This Swarovski glass crystal hangs in my kitchen window. For over twenty years, I’ve kept a crystal in that window. For over twenty years, many mornings start with rainbows.

Before some of my children could walk or say mama, the morning light would crash through the crystal and splash rainbows on the cabinets and floors. My children learned to follow the bursts of color through the air, capturing little rainbows with tiny hands.

I remember the rainbows.

The nest is long empty, but I keep the crystal in the window.

Crystals are fun. Science. Fractured light. Folklore. Memories. Magic. The simple joy of chasing rainbows in our tiny kitchen.

Mama! Rainbow! I got the rainbow!

But rainbows are impossible to hold. The sun floats up through the morning, indifferent, and the colors follow, fading from the kitchen.

Those tiny hands are long grown, their adventures and journeys like arcs. I stand in the wellspring of rainbows and look up. On some mornings, as the light shatters through crystal in the window, I dance among the tiny rainbows. And remember.

©Copyright Pennie Nichols. All Rights Reserved, 2017.