Every family has stories worth preserving.

The house on Maple Street had many rooms, but the one I remember most vividly was the kitchen. My mother had painted it a bright buttercup yellow the summer I turned seven, and the morning light would pour through the windows above the sink, making the whole room glow like the inside of a lantern.

Every Saturday morning, my grandmother would arrive before dawn to make her famous cinnamon rolls. I would wake to the smell of yeast and sugar, padding downstairs in my pajamas to find her already elbow-deep in flour. She never used a recipe she always said the dough would tell her what it needed.

Those mornings taught me something I did not fully understand until I had my own kitchen, my own children. It was not about the cinnamon rolls, though they were extraordinary. It was about showing up. Week after week, year after year, my grandmother drove twenty miles before sunrise to be there when I woke up. That consistency was her love language.

The yellow kitchen is long gone now, repainted by new owners who never knew its history. But every time I smell cinnamon, I am seven years old again, watching my grandmother is hands work magic in the golden morning light.