Opened the new cd this morning

     For several years my Mom & Dad have known how tight money has been.  When my birthday would roll around she would hand over a gorgeous sentimental card with a check and a request to spend it on myself.  "Get something just for YOU".  Inevitably, it would pay a past due bill or buy something the kids needed.  Sometimes it even bought the presents for the upcoming birthdays.
     This past birthday in September my Mom got me the sweetest collection of gifts.  Barely able to walk she couldn't get out to shop at all.   A scheduled cataract surgery meant that vision was a challenge.  She had trouble hearing on the phone though she was in complete denial.  And then there was the difficulty breathing.  For my Mom, handing me a card THIS year should have been the only way she could have given me anything.  Yet on my birthday I received the following: a beautiful collection of teas complete with steeping pot, a Frank Lloyd Wright piece of stained glass with one of my favorite designs, a satchel full of dried lavender complete with gorgeous glass bowl to hold the tiny aromatics  and a cd titled Eckhart Tolle's Music to Quiet the Mind.  Why such an odd music choice?  A few years back when I had felt nothing else was working I read A New Earth.   It not only blew my mind but it transformed me in such a way I didn't think possible.  I swelled with a renewed energy and begged any and all to read it...if not to change their own lives then just to be able to share with them.  Mom sent Dad out for multiple copies that she passed out with just my excitement as a guide.    Needless to say, reading it was a challenge for her but she respected the process nonetheless.
     Her gifts were to promote peace and calm...a few of the things that this year had stripped away.   She was so proud of the collection of finds but in a tender and giving way.  She had listened.  I can now sit in my room smelling the lavender, looking at beauty, taking in soothing warmth and hearing peaceful sounds.  Sometimes I believe she knew, truly knew she was going.  The night I opened the gifts I felt a twinge of it as well.  Now, as my senses are filled with her grace and compassion for a little girl who had grown up and grown tired...I see how these gifts are all bringing her here to me.  She is only a sip of tea, a spurt of color and a sniff of lavender away...