©2004 IBKimage

My mom died earlier this year and as we approach the first anniversary of her death I am reminded how much she loved flowers  and instilled that love in me.   Another memory is that she often lost things and then would search for days only to declare:  “This time it’s gone forever …” until it wasn’t.  I was often the person she called when this occurred and after suggesting she quietly think “backwards in her mind”,  she would get annoyed and insist that I wasn’t helping .

The gift of this drama around losing things, was that it changed the way I responded when I lost my own things or when I couldn’t immediately find out the answer to something I was searching for.  I decided to do an initial search and  if I couldn’t find “it” I would wait for it to find me.  I have saved many hours of frustration and drama and invariably just when I need something “it”does indeed find me .

I took this picture  over 7 years ago when I was staying at the Ghion Hotel in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia while taking a graduate class.  As I walked back and forth to the hotel or on the grounds  surrounding it a  beautiful scent greeted my nostrils. After several days of “sniffing” hundreds of flowers to try to match the scent and the flower, “it” found me as I entered the front door of the hotel from a lower stairway.

I have searched  but have not been able to identify “it”.  So dear readers, with your help I hope the answer will “find me.”

Joy to you and yours in the days ahead.

IBK