Tulips and two reflections

“We are homesick most for the places we have never known.”

― Carson McCullers

“His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.”

― Ernest Hemingway

__________

My niece Leah gave me those tulips for Mother's Day.  I love them, and her. The two quotes I stumbled across in my interweb travels this week. Why did they speak to me, you might ask. The first plumbs a kind of nostalgia for the places in the world I will now never visit, not in this life, because my body doesn't work as it optimally might—if one can be nostalgic for experiences one has never had. The second quote is the why of the first, a lament on the loss of effortless flight. It's not that I cannot still travel. I just need to figure out a different way to do it. Even with its pain flares, my body still carries me through each day, and I need to remember to be a bit more grateful for its tenacity, which is to say, mine.