Pausing for Beauty

Let's rewind a bit, shall we? Sunday I had several hours to myself, reading, enjoying coffee, getting a haircut. Monday night, I went out for coffee with friends, no children. And then Tuesday, I received the most beautiful gift. The beauty of the gift was only outdone by the beauty of the heart that gave it.


These arrived on my doorstep Tuesday afternoon when everything matched their beauty. KayTar was healthy, I had been able to take a bit of a breather, life was realigning itself to some semblance of normal, and the flowers were the beautiful icing on the cake. I thought my heart would burst.

And then, as it always seems to happen, KayTar started to get sick and the dark cloud crept in once more. I felt overwhelmed immediately. The good; the beauty that I had found in those few days vanished as quickly as it had come. But the flowers were blooming, bigger and brighter each day in spite of it all.


Each time I enter the kitchen, where they sit perched near the window, I pause to look at them. At times, I pull them down off the counter just to feel the weight of them in my hands, the weight of someone's thoughtfulness right there in my kitchen. The kitchen is the first place I go each morning and usually the last place I visit each night. Each day, the flowers whisper good morning and goodnight. When KayTar wakes in the night, I stumble in, half-blind to get her a drink. The flowers wink at me, through my squinted, tired eyes; reminding me that beauty exists even here, in the wee hours of the morning...even when everything else sleeps soundly.







The rustle of the leaves, the velvet of the petals, the vibrancy of the colors work together to speak out to me in a voice I recognize, saying, "The beauty is always there, you just have to remember how to look for it."

And I whisper back to them, "Thank you. Thank you."