What's deep and outrageous is what is right in front of our face. And we don't notice.

A vase of tulips sat on our kitchen windowsill for three days, the stems soaking in cool water. One flower did not survive the transplant and began to wilt and droop. My youngest daughter noticed this and together, we cut it off with a pair of her school craft scissors. She cupped it in her hands and said she was going to plant it in our garden - the same space we had created together a few weeks earlier when she had stayed home from school on a Tuesday. I resisted the urge to tell her that the tiny, silky petals’ days would not be lengthened. I watched from the window as she placed it amongst dark colored mulch and the quiet evidence of autumn. Late evening was soon replaced by a cover of darkened sky. Sleeping children. Their father awakened by dreams. I walk outside to look up at the dusty milky way, which I imagine as millions of tiny fires leading the way to some other world. There are no street lights here in this far away place; and in the absence of machine and person-made light, the residue of star dust cascades like fall leaves onto my form, leaving what seems like everything aglow. I look down, feeling the moist, cooled grass alive underneath my naked feet and the moonlight reflecting against the river rocks in the garden. I traced it with my eyes, landing on the tiny flower laid down several hours earlier by the seemingly tinier hands of my baby girl. It was completely open - the stigma pulling in the energy of the world. I marveled at this. I want to be open and trusting and resilient; full of life and star dust. And maybe acknowledging this kind of wanting or yearning within myself - really being in touch with it and naming it becomes a starting point for something deeper and more outrageous than I could ever imagine.