on a rainy day in portland in my Texas boots...

I decide to spend it meandering around in a gigantic independent bookstore. I am attempting to pack myself with worthwhile literature before I leave my home country for so many years. Some silly fear of loneliness in a foreign speaking country forces a surrounding of english fiction.

After making some grown-up, educating selections, with thoughts of my work everpresent, I am pulled to the children's section. Ironic that at this transformation in my life I am pulled back to the shelves holding the Newberry Award winners that looked just the same on my bookshelf twenty years ago. Here, I stumble across a soothing image of whom my brother and I remember to be "The Lupine Lady". Actually titled, "Miss Rumphius" I am curious as to why this book is so prominently displayed next to the other silly little children's books selected for graduates like, " Oh, The Places You Will Go" by Dr. Seuss, and "I Can Be Anything" by David Spanelli. My only personal recolection of this book is of a beautifully illustrated woman who plants beautiful lupines in her seaside town. My endeering memory of her is in admiration. Longing to be that beautiful woman someday, I paused in the bookstore to reminisce on the days before bedtime, at my parents side, being read to sleep. Pulling myself into those cool Ohio evenings under the warm pink comforter, the story begins with Alice on her grandfather's lap,

"When I grow up, I too will go to far away places, and when I grow old, I too will live by the sea."

"That is all very well Alice, but there is a third thing you must do... ... you must make the world more beautiful."

Now, I understand as my eyes well with tears. Now I feel why this picture book brings me such warmth. As Alice becomes Miss Rumphius she travels the world. From tropical to freezing climates she makes friends. And, in almost every images of her journey, she is surrounded by children. The story concludes with her planting of lupines, even in illness, and passing her worldly knowledge to a child.

I wanted to be her then, and I still want to be her now.

It is incredible how this motivation instilled in me unconsciously as a child can be so powerful today. This can only be attributed to the work of my parents. Because they read me these simple stories of moral value, I have been built to enjoy the beauty that is and make it more.

As a child I longed for this, and now I am headed there. These shoes my parents have built allow me to walk the path i am on with some grace and strength to back me up.

Mom and Dad-

I can not only thank you for helping me on my journey, but for instilling the drive in my soul to make me Miss Rumphius. Someday, I will be able to sit by the water and see the beautiful lupines I have planted around my world. I can only hope that I am one of your rose-colored flowers.