This week, I’m spending five days “glazing”—giving flowers to people who shaped me. Not just the central figures, but the ones on the edges of life’s early chapters. The ones who stepped in, stayed steady, and changed everything without asking for credit.
Today, I want to glaze Linda Nichols, founder of Linda’s Kids Child Care in Sapulpa, Oklahoma.
From ages 5 to 9, my brother and I spent our days at Linda’s Kids while our mom worked long hours and our dad was in med school. It wasn’t our first daycare, but it was the first one that felt like stability. The first one that felt like home.
Before Linda’s Kids, we were taken on highways in the backs of pickup trucks. We experienced neglect and worse. But when we landed at Linda’s, everything changed. Linda didn’t just watch kids—she welcomed them. She created a space where every child was seen, and for some of us, like my brother and me, she sent a little extra love our way.
Instead of resenting being dropped off from sunrise to sundown, I remember roller-skating rink trips. I remember the day a teen employee handed me 50 free games of Mario and it felt like I had won the lottery. I remember playing Kaboom in the back room, hours on the playground, and that quiet miracle of being allowed to be a kid.
Linda gave us that.
I still have the memory book she gave us when we left. The pictures have faded, but the feeling hasn’t. It never will. That feeling of knowing someone was looking out for you—not because they had to, but because that’s just who they were.
Linda ran that daycare for nearly three decades. She gave thousands of kids safety, structure, snacks, field trips, stories, songs, and more than anything, a sense that the world could be warm. That adults could be trusted. That love could be steady.
She passed away in 2014, but her legacy is alive in every kid who got to grow up a little more whole because they spent time in her orbit.
Linda, thank you for giving me a version of childhood that had softness in it. You’ll never know what that meant to me. But I remember.
To anyone reading—go glaze somebody today. Say the words. Don’t wait.
Three more days to come. Let’s keep it going.