My little one was born in the year of the rabbit.  So now every time I see a bunny I think of her.  I was going in the kitchen to make dinner when I saw this and immediately took a picture of it.  Something about it was so unexpectedly sweet.  She’d brought it home from school and had taped it on the counter right where I would see it but it was at her eye level.  I went into her playroom and she was trying to hide a coy smile.  “Guess what?!” I exclaimed.  “What?” she said, now smiling broadly.  “I found a bunny rabbit in our kitchen!” I said as I widened my eyes.  She giggled, “I did that!  It’s for you Mama!”  “Well I LOVE it!” I told her as I gathered her up in my arms for a big hug.  “I colored it and I cut it by myself!” she said proudly.  “Thank you so much for letting me have it,” I told her while I savored the feel of her arms around my neck.  “You’re welcome,” she said, suddenly shy.  The 19th century writer George Sand wrote, “There is only one happiness in this life, to love and be loved.”  I learned something fascinating while looking up the citation for this quote that came to mind.  I discovered that George Sand was actually the pseudonym for the French novelist and memoirist Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin.  She was equally known for a much publicized affair with the famous pianist and composer Frédéric Chopin.  I love the thrill of discovery!  Between my little one’s surprise and learning George Sand was really a woman it made for a great evening.  Of course the greatest joy of all is having my baby to love and knowing that some bunny loves me, too.

To be fair, Giverny (pictured here) was not the culprit.  But the poem came to mind when I saw this picture.  I was unable to leave the vase on the windowsill because our Siamese kitten (the rose lover) tipped it over and all the water went down into our toaster.  It took me three days before I worked up the nerve to try and use it again.  I used to treat myself to grocery store roses once a week; there is something about seeing a fresh flower over dinner that is so lovely.  I confess I just bought a realistic set of silk roses because I knew the cats couldn’t destroy them and they would never die.  I am using my rose money to save up for something else but there is a sadness in not seeing a living rose in our home.  Luckily, the people who owned our house at some point before us planted an old fashioned rose bush with spray roses that actually still have that wonderful rose smell.  I do not pick them, I just go out and smell them every morning before work when I am watering.  As you might be able to tell from the picture, this rose was already dying.  At least my roses outside live a long time and I am able to enjoy them daily without cutting them.  The English poet and cleric Robert Herrick famously wrote:

“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying.”

When I was younger I found this depressing.  Now I view it as a positive.  Time is like a precious rose; gather ye rosebuds while ye may.

It’s funny when you think about it:  the word “leading.”  It can either mean you are leading or someone is leading you.  In martial arts I see both; the push and the pull; the yin and the yang.  On this day my little one lead the class in stretching exercises; the only girl in a sea of boys.  She is so tiny and most of them looked so tall.  Of course she is a student so the Master was leading her from the back.  Such a fascinating study in contrast.  She is 5; he is 45.  In Native culture we believe in the circle of life, and as I gazed up at the South Korean flag I could not help but note the circular pattern contained within.  My mother spent so much of her time watching me; now I watch my little girl.  I pray one day she will be lucky enough to watch hers, and that I will be around to enjoy it.  I observed the kids push and pull each other to lower themselves eventually into splits.  One would go up and it pulled the other downward.  Next the one who was down came up and the one who was upward went down.  The English poet William Cowper wrote, “They whom truth and wisdom lead, can gather honey from a weed.”  This is what I strive for and wish for my daughter as well … to gather honey from a weed.

Today is a very hard day for me.  It is my mother’s birthday.  Her death is still new enough to me that I still struggle at times to accept it.  I also struggle against envying others having their mother when I do not have mine, which I know is not right.  I realize some people never get to know their own mother.  I try to remember all the time I was blessed to have with her and not lament the time my daughter will never have.  There is a constant underlying struggle against pain and sadness, and this is one of the days it hits me particularly hard.  I got to thinking about yesterday and power.  I know my mother would not want me to be sad; that it would hurt her terribly.  And so I am striving to use my newfound power today.  I cannot control that she is no longer physically with me, but I can control what I dwell upon.  So instead of crying over my loss, I am choosing today to celebrate her.  My mother was a firecracker; a true redhead who would let you know it if you’d crossed a line with her.  She truly had no tolerance for fools.  She was also quiet, gentle, and sweet.  She had the most radiant, kindest smile I have ever had the pleasure of receiving.  And I was lucky enough to have received it often during my life with her.  She loved me fiercely; just as I loved her.  We were best friends yet I respected and cherished her as my mother.  I still think I can call her sometimes and I feel lonelier than ever when I realize I cannot.  She may have been generally soft spoken, but she had a great since of humor and instilled in me a love of music — from Julio Iglesias to Willy Nelson to Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata,” his Piano Sonata Number 14, which she played effortlessly on our baby grand almost daily.  I lifted great vernacular from her like “a hair” for a little bit, “the air” for air-conditioning, “fire” for heat, and many others.  Her favorite color was yellow, and one of her favorite flowers remained the daffodil.  I did not learn until her death it is a flower that actually turns toward the sun.  That is what my mother was, a beautiful ray of sunlight that beamed upon you with all the warmth of the sun.  When she went into assisted living, her caregiver immediately named her Sunshine and refused to call her anything else.  I thought it was so very fitting.  She also instilled in me a great love of the literary classics with regard to poetry.  I cannot even see to type through my tears.  I am going to quote the poem I read over and over at her bedside as she lay dying.  I read it so often I have it memorized still.  It is from the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth entitled, “The Daffodils:”

“I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.”

Mama I am trying so hard.  I am trying to smile and be gentle like you.  I am trying not to think about being an orphan or how incredibly lonely I am.  God graced me with your namesake, and I will rejoice in that every day, but especially today.

Well our electricity went out.  It happened in the middle of the night and I woke up to the sight you see pictured before you.  (This was in our family room and those are battery operated candles.)  Fortunately it was neither freezing nor blazing hot; we have experienced power outages during both of those harsh conditions.  I worried first about our indoor fish and outdoor fish (which require motors to oxygenate the water.)  Of course the hubs FREAKED over the state of our fridge — which I bodily refused to let him open.  “WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?!” my husband hollered as my little one said she was afraid of the dark.  We now had a family state of emergency and it was my job to keep everyone from wigging out.  “It’s all going to be OK,” I said, trying to mitigate the fallout.  The American prosperity gospel televangelist Joel Osteen said:

“Every day we have plenty of opportunities to get angry, stressed or offended.  But what you’re doing when you indulge these negative emotions is giving something outside yourself power over your happiness.  You can choose to not let little things upset you.”

And so I tried to distract them both.  It turns out we had about a ten hour wait; it could have been so much worse.  The food was saved because the refrigerator stayed closed (miraculously.)  As the sun rose my little one’s fear of the dark, quiet house dissipated into the light.  Having no power gave me time to reflect on how helpless one can become in the blink of an eye.  Secretly dying for coffee, I realized with no small amount of shame there are those all over the world who must live without power daily.  I discovered the real power was within myself — in how I chose to handle the situation versus letting the situation handle me.  From now on I resolve to use more of my own power.

It has been noted several times here that I am a hopeless romantic.  I love it all:  candlelight, soft music, dancing, the sound of rain, the sweet scent of flowers, love letters, etc.  *SIGH*  I married the most handsome man I have ever met who is sincere but not what I would call a romantic.  So imagine my surprise when I found a perfect trail of rose petals going up our steps when I came home.  The “new age” music was playing on the TV, the lights were low, and the house smelled like gardenia.  I made my way up the steps and followed the fresh rose petals all the way into our bedroom where I found they were strewn perfectly across our bed.  A handsome guy greeted me there only he had bright blue eyes and not the deep dark brown my husband has.  If you look closer at the picture you will discover who my mystery man was.  It was Blue, our Siamese cat.  The little devil ruined all my flowers and pulled them one by one out of the vase.  Then, after deflowering them like some kind of a wild animal cleaning a carcass, he deposited all the stems in a corner of our formal dining room.  Upon closer inspection I noted he proceeded to hunker over them as he picked them up with his little teeth and then ferociously “killed” them over and over one by one.  I had left the TV on so the animals wouldn’t be lonely all day which explained the music and the gardenia scent was because I had changed all the wax in my candle warmers the night before.  The American writer and academic at Columbia University, Carolyn Gold Heilbrun, once said, “Romance is the glamour which turns the dust of everyday life into a golden haze.”  Ironically she wrote mystery novels under the pen name Amanda Cross.  For several fleeting moments, the dust of my everyday life had taken on a golden haze.  But I still basked in its warm glow before solving the case of the mysterious rose petals.

When I was little I never could figure out why my folks were so proud to see my work up on the board at school.  And then I saw this:  front and center was my little one’s spelling and handwriting work that had been thumbtacked up just outside of her classroom on the display board.  I was coming to get her and when she came out I shrieked, “YOUR WORK!” and pointed to it with wide eyes.  She furrowed her little brow and said, “Yeah” nonchalantly before turning to get her things from her cubby.  Still staring up at it by the time she came back, I said, “It’s on the board!” to which she replied “yes” as if I was not in my right mind.  “I’m so proud of you kiddo!”  “Thanks” she said as led us toward the doors.  “When did you do that?” I asked, trailing behind her.  “Today” she said over her shoulder.  “Well that’s great!” I said while I opened the car door for her.  “Thank you” she said again in that careful voice that indicated she thought I might be nuts.  “Do we have any snacks?” she asked as I buckled her in.  I know she has been proud of her work before because she has shown it to me.  The little thing is so darn tight-lipped sometimes it is absolutely maddening.  Maybe it’s that she was uncomfortable with her work being displayed.  Maybe it’s that she didn’t think it was a big deal.  Maybe she thought I was wacko for being so thrilled about it.  The 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, said, “Don’t worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition.”  I finally decided that, whatever her thoughts, at least she was on the board!

I do not like the stereotypical image of the woman who LIVES for shoes and handbags.  Having said that, I must confess I do have two nice bags — one for “every day” and one more for evening.  The only shoes I like are sandals because, in part, I have wide feet.  I have also reached the stage in my life where I absolutely refuse to keep any part of my body cooped up unless it is for something truly exceptional.  Texas is getting to be like Arizona or Florida in that it is simply too hot to wear jeans most of the time and sandals are acceptable in the evenings.  I have about half a dozen good shoes and I do enjoy the feeling of wearing ones that are not so shot they flatten your feet.  So, I went with my little one and introduced her to the shoe section at Nordstrom’s.  Naturally more girly than I, and not having grown up the way I did with no money to really buy shoes, my little one squealed with delight.  “Oh Mommy LOOK at these sparkly ones!  They look like the have diamonds on them!” she exclaimed.  Realizing for the first time I had a little partner in crime, I started asking her what else she liked.  I went in looking for a good pair of walking sandals for summer that would hold up and looked nice.  I was in luck because right now my favorite color blue is in season.  “You should definitely get those Mama” she said, sounding more like fifteen than five.  And then the unthinkable happened.  My husband decided to show up at the mall.  Looking at him as if he were some type of unicorn, my little one and I were thrilled to see him.  He said he just wanted to tell us goodbye before he went to work.  We hugged and kissed him and our little one said “Don’t go Daddy!” as she attached herself to him like a barnacle.  I snapped this picture with her literally clamped around him while he attempted to drag himself out of the shoe department.  The Japanese poet Ryunosuke Satoro said, “Let your dreams outgrow the shoes of your expectations.”  That is something I wish for myself, my precious little one, and for my husband.  I hope everyone, no matter what their age, will aspire to outgrow their shoes.