Please Don’t Bump the Ends

A Story About Care, Nostalgia, and the Childhood I Carried

Some memories live quietly in the body.

They aren’t always the big moments we expect to remember either.

They’re smaller. Softer. Often ordinary.

But when we grow older, we begin to understand the love that lived inside them.

“Please Don’t Bump the Ends” is one of those memories.

This oil painting is part of my series The Childhood I Carried, a body of work that explores the overlooked moments of childhood like the small rituals, quiet care, and everyday experiences that shape who we become.

The series began as something deeply personal.

A way to reconnect with my younger self.

A way to honor the joy, tenderness, and community that existed inside moments that once felt ordinary.

Now, as an adult and a mother myself, I realize those moments were never ordinary at all.

They were acts of care, love, and protection.

And this painting captures one of the most familiar rituals of Black childhood.

The Memory Behind the Painting

If you grew up in a Black household, the phrase “please don’t bump the ends” probably sounds familiar.

It was something many young Black girls would say while sitting in the chair getting their hair pressed with a hot comb.

We thought we had a say in the final result.

In our minds, bumped ends made us look too young.

We wanted our hair bone straight, hanging down, looking grown and polished the way we imagined adults wore their hair.

But our mothers saw something we didn’t.

To them, bone straight hair made us look too grown.

So while we would politely, and sometimes dramatically, ask “please don’t bump the ends,” nine times out of ten the same thing happened.

The comb would curl.

The ends would turn under.

And we would leave the chair with bumped ends anyway.

At the time, it felt like a small defeat. A quiet moment of a child realizing the final decision wasn’t actually hers.

But now, looking back as an adult, I see something different in that memory.

There was humor in it.

A little girl negotiating with her mother about how grown she wanted to look.

But there was also something deeper to me.

There was protection.

Our mothers understood something we didn’t yet know just yet, that childhood was something worth preserving a little longer.

So they curled the ends.

Not to ignore our request.

But to hold on to our youth for just a little while more.

And when I think back on that moment now, I don’t remember frustration.

I remember sitting in that chair.

The heat of the comb.

The smell of blue magic.

And my mother, standing behind me taking her time.

What I remember most is care.

The Beginning of The Childhood I Carried

The series The Childhood I Carried began during a season of reflection.

As my life expanded (my career, my family, my responsibilities), I found myself revisiting the emotional landscape of childhood.

Not the dramatic moments but the quiet 'ordinary' ones.

Moments like:

• Drinking from the water hose in the summer.

• Being told “We have food at home.”

• The small pride of being freshly dressed or freshly groomed.

• Neighborhood sounds, laughter, routines.

These were the building blocks of our emotional world.

They were often overlooked while we were living them.

But looking back, I realized how deeply they shaped my understanding of joy, belonging, and care.

Creating this series became a form of inner child healing.

Not in a heavy way.

But in a way that says:

I choose to remember the joy.

I choose to honor the moments that held me.

I choose to carry my childhood forward not as nostalgia alone, but as something alive inside the work.

Painting Memory

As an oil painter, my work often exists somewhere between realism and emotion.

The goal is never just to document a scene.

It’s to capture the feeling of remembering it.

In Please Don’t Bump the Ends, the composition centers around a young girl whose hair has just been freshly pressed and curled. Her posture reflects the careful awareness that comes after the ritual, the quiet stillness that follows a moment of care.

She carries herself differently and with confidence.

And almost cautiously.

As if she understands that what was just done for her is something to protect.

The moment is small.

But emotionally, it holds a universe.

Symbolism in the Painting

Every element in this painting carries meaning beyond the literal scene.

The Hair

Hair in Black culture has always been deeply symbolic.

It carries identity, history, expression, and tradition.

In this painting, the pressed curls represent more than a hairstyle.

They represent the labor of love behind the ritual, the time someone took to care for you.

The phrase “don’t bump the ends” becomes a metaphor for protecting something precious.

The Posture

The careful stillness of the child reflects the awareness that comes with being trusted with something delicate.

As children, we often followed these rules without fully understanding them.

Now we recognize them as gestures of protection.

The Light

The softness of the light in the painting mirrors the emotional tone of memory itself.

Not harsh. Not dramatic.

Just warm.

The kind of light memories live in.

The Moment

Nothing extraordinary is happening in the scene.

And that is exactly the point.

The beauty of childhood often lives inside the moments that were never meant to be remarkable.

Nostalgia as Cultural Memory

When people see this painting, the response is often immediate.

They laugh.They smile.They say “I remember that.”

That response is powerful.

Because nostalgia isn’t just personal.

It’s communal.

Certain phrases, rituals, and experiences live across generations. They connect us to our families, our communities, and the environments that shaped us.

Through this work, I’m exploring how memory becomes a form of cultural storytelling.

Paintings can hold these stories.

They can preserve them.

They can remind us that our everyday experiences were worthy of being documented.

Why I Paint These Stories

As artists, we often chase big narratives.

But I’ve come to believe that some of the most powerful stories live inside the smallest moments.

The ones that felt too ordinary to remember.

The ones we didn’t realize were shaping us.

This series asks a simple question:

What if those moments mattered more than we realized?

What if the small rituals of childhood like hair care, food, laughter, community, were actually the foundation of our emotional world?

What if joy lived there all along?

Carrying Childhood Forward

The title of the series, The Childhood I Carried, reflects something I’ve come to understand through the process of creating this work.

Childhood doesn’t disappear when we grow up.

We carry it.

In the way we love.

In the way we nurture.

And in the way we remember.

These paintings are not just about the past.

They are about the living memory of who we were and how that version of ourselves continues to shape who we are becoming.

In honoring those moments, I am honoring the child who lived them.

And in doing so, I hope viewers are invited to reconnect with the childhood they carried too.

About the Artist

Stina Aleah is a contemporary oil painter and muralist known for emotionally resonant figurative work that explores memory, culture, and personal storytelling. Her work has been commissioned by organizations including the NBA, Marvel, The Cleveland Cavaliers, The Cleveland Guardians nd major cultural institutions.

Through painting, she explores how everyday experiences become lasting emotional landscapes.

Collecting the Work

Please Don’t Bump the Ends is part of the ongoing series The Childhood I Carried.

The Original, limited edition and open edition prints from the work are released in a timed window beginning March 12, 2026, allowing collectors to participate in the story of the piece.

Collect The Work

Reflection

When I was a child, “don’t bump the ends” felt like a simple instruction.

Now I see it differently.

It was someone saying:

I took time to care for you.

Protect what was done with love.

And maybe that’s what memory really is.

The quiet realization that love was present in places we didn’t yet have the language to recognize.

Thank you for taking the time to read the meaning behind this painting, my series, and the foundation of all of my work.

Stina Aleah