Miles looked at me with wide green eyes, as if to ask me if it was safe to step inside the room.
“Each petal has a different color, and each color represents a feeling.I would like you to look at those feelings and write, or draw, something that made you feel that feeling recently,” Mary continued.
I gestured for Miles to follow me, and he did, one hesitant step at a time.We both lowered ourselves to sit on the carpet, cross-legged like the kids.Mary handed out the paper flowers, each petal already painted in a different color.
Bonnie, a tiny girl with big brown eyes, who always asked me to braid her long hair, plopped down beside Miles and immediately handed him her flower.“I don’t know what to write,” she said, brows furrowed with serious six-year-old intensity.
He blinked at her like someone who had just been handed a puzzle with no picture on the box.I saw the panic flash in his eyes.His rat-in-a-room-full-of-cats expression made me quietly chuckle.
I leaned toward him and whispered, “Just ask her what made her happy this week.Start with yellow.”
He nodded, slowly turning back to her.“Uh… what made you feel yellow this week?”
The little girl’s face lit up.“I saw a frog in the garden, and it jumped on my shoe!”she grinned, proud.
Miles smiled back, visibly amused by her.“That’s very yellow,” he said.
“I saw a ladybug yesterday and she landed on my hand!”another little girl told Miles eagerly, stretching out her arm to illustrate.
One more kid behind him tapped his shoulder.“Can I please write on your back?I need a table.”
I snorted with laughter at Miles’s expression.And he became a human desk.
“Ella, my brother stole my yogurt and I felt… fire!So I think I should paint my whole flower red,” said Andy, a five-year-old little boy I’d known since he was born.He explained his deep yogurt anger to me, opening his arms to give me a hug.
“But you remember when your grandmother gave you cookies later that day?That should have made you feel a different color, right?”
“Yes,” he said, his little cheeks smiling at me.“That made me feel really happy and thankful.”
Just then, a little girl with two braids and socks that didn’t match, sat quietly beside me.She had always been very quiet.She spoke softly and had been really shy the first time I met her.She reminded me of my younger self.
“You wanna talk about this one?”I asked gently, tapping the gray petal, which meantsadnessaccording to the legend.
She nodded, not quite ready to look at me.
“I felt gray when my hamster died,” she said in a small voice.“His name was Popcorn.”
“Popcorn sounds like a really good little friend,” I said softly, lowering my head so we could have a moment just the two of us.
“He was really soft.And he used to sleep in my hoodie pocket,” she added, with a quiet sniffle.
I passed her a crayon and asked, “Do you want to draw him?”
She started sketching right away, a puffy blob with tiny ears and a big smile.
When she finished, she looked at me.“He’s a star now,” she whispered.
I helped her writegray: when Popcorn became a staron the petal.And she rested her head against me.
Miles looked up at me across the circle while chatting with the kids.He had adjusted to being a living desk and part-time spelling coach.His eyes, still wide, now had a different glint in them.Awe, maybe.Or confusion as to how this chaos made so much sense.
One of the kids crawled into his lap like it was the most normal thing in the world.Miles froze.Then the kid looked up and said, “Can you help me spell ‘proud’?”
He did.Carefully.Slowly.Letter by letter.His face soft with focus.
And I knew, right then, that even if he didn’t believe it yet, the kids had already adopted him.Just like that.No interviews.No professional qualifications.
Just time, presence, and patience.
