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My dad the engineer taught me to think, but my mom the artist showed me how to see.

This month my wife and I will bring a new baby into the world, but without the loving wisdom of my mom. She died from cancer two years ago this month, making November a bittersweet month. She lived from 1932 to 2005, and her name was Gladys Guarisco. Her grandchildren called her Gabby.

A hardscrabble childhood framed her deep appreciation for the aesthetic of imperfection. After raising five children—and man, were we imperfect—my mom returned to college to earn a bachelor’s degree in fine art. For the remainder of her life she worked in two primary media—watercolors and soil.

Her paintings relished the rusting metal and rotting timbers of abandoned barns and Cajun cabins slowly melting into fields. And she reveled in the endless textures and colors of native Louisiana flowers and blossoms. Her paintings still hang today, from California to Europe.

She gave life to flowers in her garden, a 20-year labor of love that arose from her imagination and my dad’s steady sweat and effort. Now mature and meandering, that garden has provided my daughters with countless hours of exploration and delight. Although it’ll soon belong to some other family, that garden will endure as her earthen legacy, enthralling new generations of children unable to resist its rambling, green mysteries.

She cross-pollinated her twin passions of gardening and painting, and passed on that love of nature to children through art classes. The very first lesson she taught new students was how to look at something—to really look at it and absorb its form and color—in a way that allowed its beauty to inspire them.

This month, our baby will join this troubled world. But our child will be blessed with a natural and gifted teacher for a mom, who will coax that imagination into an understanding world, one book at a time. And through doting attention, three loving grandparents will reveal the marvels of science, and the exhilarating power of laughter.

But I’m sad my mom won’t be here for it. I try, sometimes too hard, to keep her alive for my two daughters. I worry less about my 19-year-old, who has a full childhood with her Gabby to sustain her. Our 5-year-old got three wonderful Gabby years, but now it seems like only a blink of an eye. I find myself desperately trying to imbed memories, retelling the same old stories in hopes they won’t fade.

So this November my hope for our new baby is this world’s ugliness does not obscure the kind of natural beauty that inspired my mom. And I hope I somehow figure out how to pass on the most important lesson she taught me, how to actually see it.