Beautiful, Tiny Things

This morning, the movers hauled away the last of my mother’s furniture remaining in her condo: Several antique end tables, a roll-top desk that had been my grandfather’s when he was a boy, and a highboy my father had always used to store his clothing.
Although my mother passed away seven months ago, I found myself in full mourning once again as I watched Daniel and Earl carrying items from her condo to the moving van. This is the end, I thought. It’s really all over now.

My mother’s condo is right on the edge of a meadow, where each spring cows graze on the emerald grass. To lift my spsirits, I decided to walk over to the fence and look across the meadow. As I walked, I happened to look down and see a perfect, tiny acorn lying on a bed of dried oak leaves. I bent down to pick the acorn up. Next to it, I saw a stem of tiny dried red berries.

I spent the next half hour, head down, discovering beautiful small artifacts deposited on the ground by the rain and wind.
“You looking for mushrooms?” Daniel asked.

“No, I’m looking for beautiful tiny things,” I told him. “See,” and I held up the stem of dried red berries for him to admire. “Isn’t this beautiful?”

“What’s beautiful,” he said,“ nodding his head, “is that you find ordinary tiny things beautiful. That’s what’s beautiful.”