Hearts-On-A-Chain

Flowers Of May

We are essentially rhythmic. Patterns that define us return again and again,

and in these returns we find our substance and our continuity, 

our original nature and our identity. -Thomas Moore

Henry says, beaming, Let’s go to Manang Deling’s house!

Yes, she has da best cadena-de-amor flowers, Didi agrees amiably.

The moon has barely gone to sleep and the leaves have just awakened. There are freckled places on the ground where pale sun rays are just beginning to sift down through the apple star trees. It is first light, and the children are out as suddenly as if a switch had been flicked.

In my city of Where-The-Nilad-Grows, it’s the children who wear the flower corsage on Mother’s Day. Effortless youth, robust and vigorous and unfinished, gather small fistfuls of the hearts-on-a-chain florets which are gathered into a small bouquet and pinned right above the heart on the kamiseta shirt or baro.

Did you bring a pin? Ned's voice is brisk. Lebby, I need one. Right. Here. He emphasizes each word, as he points above his left pocket.

The scenery takes on sunlight and pulse as small posies are formed, then roughly cinched. Sweeps of color, bands and spatters, the face of saturated light fill the now-brightening day.

Many of the children pluck bunches of the dark pink flowers. Dark pink is the color for those whose mother is still living.

Others gravitate to the vines with the white heart florets. White is the color of death. It is for those mothers who have passed on. There is something about the pallid corsage that breathes a kind of sadness, a missing heartbeat. 

Yet for these children, the very thing that would normally crush them - the tragic, sorrowful, painful - becomes transformative.

Indeed, for all of them, today is a brilliant new day, more perfectly illuminated than the last. The endless chatter dominates. The girls laugh as young girls do, in shy waves of the voice. There is only here and now.

A neighborhood is whatever anyone wants to remember about it. The neighborhood may change. Children grow up, but patterns remain. The world persists. The world heals from even the mythical power of death.

Mother’s Day in my city of Where-The-Nilad-Grows is too spectacular, in so many ways, to ignore.