A Buried Lead

Good things were accomplished today. I almost finished an essay about mole-making I started five years ago, I finished another essay about death and elephants I’ve been struggling with for at least a year, I power-walked for seventy-five minutes along a path at the edge of the ocean; I beat Wendy, decisively, at Scrabble, I organized all my beads in preparation for creating necklaces for three of my friends’ girls who are about to graduate from high school, I read an analysis of Michele Obama’s belt and big-beaded necklaces, and I realized that suffering has, for a long time and mostly invisibly to me, transformed my daughter into a bodhisattva.