Hello dear readers,

How is your October starting out for you?

I love every season –Spring, Summer, Winter, and though I don’t like to show partiality, there is something about Fall that steals my heart every year! 

I read this quote recently by Viktor Frankl. For the meaning of life differs from person to person, from day to day, and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment.

In the moment I saw this fallen leaf, I found myself thinking breathtaking! The vibrant yellows! What a beautiful footprint this leaf has just made. We should all hope to light up the world this way.

What I also thought about is that this leaf doesn’t know the meaning I found. It doesn’t know how it fulfilled one of my mantras in the words of Elsie De Wolfe “to make everything around me beautiful”. For when I choose to see life this way, I am giving meaning to my life. Yet, simply by this leaf being, it made a difference in my life.

Like us humans do in every moment.

Even if we don’t know how we do.

How about you? In the moment you see this leaf, what meaning starts to speak?

May each 86,400 moments of every day hold what means the most to you.

The Creases Now Speak

Linh

Linh knew the day would come when she would have to completely let go of Mỹ.

From the moment Linh knew a tiny life was growing inside her and every day for the next two-hundred-and sixty-seven days until a part of her exited her womb, Linh began grieving. In the first days after Mỹ was born, when Linh expressed to her sister Càhow her stomach ached, her sister would assure her it was simply her body adjusting from having carried a child inside for nine months. Linh was certain it was more than that. The umbilical cord had been severed, separating her and her daughter. Her body was yearning for the missing piece that made it complete.

The night Linh told Mỹ about the letter from her brother Hien, Linh laid in bed holding a framed picture of her beloved Bảo. If only her husband was lying next to her right now. He would hold her as she anguished that the time had arrived to let her precious little girl go. Bảo would remind her that beautiful things are not meant to be held onto. “No person is ours to take” he would whisper into her ear, just as he whispered to her the day she held newborn Mỹ in her arms, already feeling her sorrow for the day she would need to let her daughter go.

Bạn biết rõ điều này Linh yêu quý của tôi, Bảo spoke into her left ear as she folded herself in a fetal position in his arms while their infant daughter was sleeping in the cradle next to their bed. “You know this well my cherished Linh.”  He went on to say “if someone gives to us their heart, then we can gently hold it in safe keep and treasure the sacred offering for all eternity. But we cannot grab into our clutches that which is not offered to us as a holy gift.”  

Linh did know this well. When she had to make a choice. To choose between her parents and Bảo. To obey her father and not marry Bảo. Or act upon her heart and become Bảo’s wife. She knew that Bảo would never forsake her. She learned that her father would renounce her as his flesh and blood if she chose not to adhere to his command.

Perhaps that is why she began grieving the day Mỹ was born.   Linh wanted to make sure that Mỹ would feel how deeply she was loved by her mother. Linh didn’t feel nor see her own mom struggling when Linh walked out the door of the home she had grown up in carrying her belongings in a small burlap knapsack.  As she stood at the doorway an extra few seconds hoping to catch a glimpse of her mom, Linh couldn’t recall ever feeling her mom fraught with sadness that Linh would be out of sight for a time.   Her parents didn’t offer their hearts to Linh so when Linh crossed the threshold to outside and the life that awaited her, she made sure not to grasp the door handle as she closed the door behind her.  

When Bảo reached for her right hand as she stood at the doorway of his parents’ home while she held her meager belongings in her left hand, Linh felt him clutch her fingers. She knew she had chosen well. She had chosen a life of eternal love.

Which was why she couldn’t leave what her beloved Bảo’ had worked hard to create for them.   She couldn’t sell the coffee shop.   He had put his heart into establishing this business for them; their family unit was his holy treasure. She loved her daughter more than life itself. Yet she would not have been given the sacred gift of motherhood if it weren’t for her beloved Bảo who taught her the depth, breadth, and width of love. 

As Linh clasped the framed picture of Bảo tighter to her chest, she prayed for strength when the time came to send Mỹ to the United States to live with her brother. As the tears fell onto the glass shrouding the image of Bảo, Linh willed herself to trust what her beloved had taught her when he didn’t return home alive from the war.   That love does not die when someone is physically gone. Not all love ends when a door closes.

Linh set down the picture frame and tiptoed to the living room. She slowly opened the drawer to the hutch that held stationery and envelopes. She pulled out two sheets; a second one in case tears stained her initial message on the first sheet.

Dear Hien,

Cà, Mỹ, and I miss you so.

We are safe.

I will be sending Mỹ to the United States. Dear Cà and I will not be coming, but please don’t worry about us.  We will stay well.

There is an American that I am planning will bring Mỹ to you. Once I know when, I will write again.

My dear Hien, she is the third that makes me whole. Please take good care of my precious little girl. 

Your sister,

Linh