#76: Double Chocolate Dissertation Ice Cream with Rainbow Sprinkles

Hello everyone! I am on a writer's retreat to complete and turn in my dissertation for my Ph.D. program this summer. I'll be back shortly (once I give my chair my dissertation chapters)... Thanks for stopping by for some inspiration ice creams, Jennifer

"Happiness is a habit of mind, beautifully framed."
love from Jennifer

(at home in glorious Union Station, Los Angeles)

*****

"Mommy nods, relief flooding her face. Her voice travels across ghostly lands and ghostly galaxies and seven high seas, soaring over tall mountains that tickle the blue belly of the sky with their rounded tips.

I forgot to give you this. I come from ghostly lands to bring you this gift -- the gift of my living words. It may come in memories of dreams of sleepless nights and salty tears, but in it lies all of my hopes that you will write every day of your life as your truest self. You are capable of things that I could only dream of, because you are overcoming challenges that I could not. Inside of you is not just my courage and strength, but also an alchemy of authenticity and ability from your birthmother, and from her mother and from me, from my mother, and from all our great grandmothers before us, an endless cord eons long...awaiting the start of a ritual -- that ritual is the gift of you. With every breath you take, our collective hope herein lies. You are authentic, powerful, lovable, beautiful, kind, worthy, creative and capable. Both of our families -- by birth and by love -- are so proud of you. Go forth with these gifts, removed from our wombs by distance -- and by hope -- but connected by our words, our breath stitched onto this very sheet of paper by ink, sewed to an invisible live cord eons long, by the geometry of our greatest gifts, our collective sorrows, and the mystical mana of our mothers' enduring love. Remember -

We stand

all of us drawn here

by an invisible cord eons long

awaiting the start of a ritual

removed from its womb

by distance and by hope...

This ritual is the Gift of You."

--"Goodnight Moon, Goodnight Mom" by Jennifer Bao Yu "Precious Jade" Jue-Steuck, published in the anthology From Home to Homeland