I just pulled my feet up and crossed my legs, so I am sitting indian-style in my desk chair. I broke the right arm, and the back is all floppy and it tends to creak ominously. It is going to collapse any minute, I am certain.
However, as I wobbled precariously atop it, cross-legged, it made me notice something: on my right knee, just on the inside, sitting on top of my tan corduroy, is half of a flower. Three tiny purple petals and a pink middle dot part, made out of glittery nail polish and taking a leave of absence from where it usually lives on my niece's fingernail. I know that she was flaking the flowers off and trying to convince everyone they were just falling away, but that does not explain how it attached itself to my pants, and then survived being tossed on the floor, packed, flown across the country, unpacked, thrown on the floor, put on, worn on the subway, and then shuffled around my office. This, ladies and gentlemen, is one resilient flower. And it makes me think of my niece in the middle of an otherwise duller-than-the-dullest-dishwater kind of day, and her little giggle -- and there is no better pick-me-up than that.