Hello dear reader,
May this find your week is starting out well for you, this last week of one month and the doorway opening to the next.
This week’s Blueprints for a Hope-Filled Life is the introduction of another character in the writings of The Creases Now Speak. You’ve read Edward, Linh, Joshua, Patrica, and now I offer you Mỹ.
But before you read what Mỹ would like to share, let me offer you a hello from the blue heron. With its message of tranquility, may that be your experience over these next couple of weeks until the next Blueprints message. May your 86,400 moments of each day be filled with the grace of calmness no matter how noisy and chaotic the external space around you.
Thank YOU, by the way.
For what?
Simply.
Thank YOU for being YOU.
Mỹ
Mỹ, or MEE as her name is pronounced, has always viewed life as temporary. Not in the sense of years to live. More from a perspective that nothing should be held on to; everything should be allowed to come and to go.
Mỹ remembers as a little girl the spring day she and her father, Bảo were walking from their home to the coffee shop her parents owned. Mỹ couldn’t take her eyes off the vibrant red blooms of the Phoenix flower they were passing by. She stopped and her outstretched hand was about to pick one of the blooms when her father gently said Không, con yêu dấu của Mẹ, bây giờ là của chúng ta để lấy và làm của riêng chúng ta. No, my dear child, it is not ours to take and make our own.
Mỹ’s father explained that all living things are not to be held on to. All things take a form to provide what is needed for the whole. Trees, for example, provide oxygen and plants provide food and nourishment. Flowers provide an experience with appreciation. Bảo knelt to tenderly look Mỹ in the eyes. As he gently put his hands on her arms, he told her human beings provide love.
Bảo’s expression became more serious as he went on tell Mỹ that human beings are teachers; they provide to the whole all the experiences needed for a well-lived life. It remains a well-lived life in how one chooses to be the student. Luôn luôn chọn tốt My yêu dấu của tôi . Always choose well my beloved Mỹ.
Then with a melancholy tone, Bảo’ said, My Mỹ, if you let the flower remain, you will have love to hold always. If you take it with you, it may wilt and die, and then suffering will always be yours.
Mỹ was seventeen when a knock on the door reminded her of her father’s words. The knock was from two officers letting her mom, Linh, and Mỹ know that her father would no longer be her teacher. Nor anyone else’s. He had been killed in the war. Mỹ didn’t think the war represented people choosing well for the whole, but she also knew her father would tell her that this was the experience human beings had developed to teach her.
How she chose to receive the experience would determine how well her life was lived. A life of love and joy. Or a life of bitterness and suffering. She could choose to keep in her mind and heart the goodness of her father’s well-lived life; in that she would always be holding onto love. Or she could hold onto how his life ended, and sorrow and anger would be her lived life.
Mỹ was twenty when a tall American gentleman with kind hazel eyes came into the coffee shop and asked for an Americano. It was only one of a few English words she knew. Over the next couple weeks, as this gentleman visited daily, Mỹ learned his name was Edward.
He was patient with her when he taught her how to say his name in English. Slowly, softly, Mỹ said E-D-W-A-R-D. There was something about his smile after she spoke all the letters. His smile reminded Mỹ of her father’s when he knelt that day and told her human beings provide love.
One evening, a few weeks after meeting Edward, Mỹ and her mom had closed the coffees shop, finished their bowls of Pho for dinner, and were preparing to sit and read from A Rose for Your Pocket: An Appreciation for Motherhood by Thich Nhat Hahn. For as far back as Mỹ could remember, it was a nightly ritual for them as a family to read a passage from a book, sit in meditative silence for nine minutes, and then share one thing they were grateful to have received from this time they had just experienced.
Right after they learned of her father’s death, Mỹ expected her mom to adjust the nine-minute time. Linh was so distraught, Mỹ didn’t think her mom could bear any association with number nine’s power of strength, cycle of growth, completeness, and eternity. Where Bảo had lived as all things temporary, Linh held on, willing permanence.
This evening Mỹ could hear her mom reaching for something during the nine minutes that was supposed to be still. When Linh gently hit the gong three times, its tone echoing time to return from their meditative state, Mỹ saw Linh holding an envelope. The envelope had stamps on it that Mỹ recognized right away as a letter from her uncle who had immigrated to the United States.
With a shaky tear-strained voice Mỹ had come to hear often in these past three years when Linh spoke, her mom let her know that Uncle Hien was offering they move to a city called Chicago to be with him. Linh didn’t wait for Mỹ to react as she continued telling Mỹ that she needed to write a note for the kind American letting him know that. Mỹ didn’t understand why, but she also trusted her mom. She knew her mom would never put her in a situation in which she would not be safe. She knew her mom would always keep Mỹ close to her side.
Mỹ found paper and a pen and wrote in Vietnamese:
Edward thân mến,
Chú tôi đã sắp xếp mẹ tôi và tôi đến Hoa Kỳ. Một thành phố tên là Chicago. Có lẽ một ngày nào đó tôi nhìn thấy bạn trong quán cà phê.
Yêu
Mỹ