The day we put up the Christmas tree, and I dragged out the boxes and fished through the ornaments for just the right ones, and from that constructed what we would gaze at for a month, a ladybug appeared on the windowsill.
I think everything is connected to everything else, so I gently invited her on my finger and she crawled on up. Look! A ladybug, in the dead of winter with windows closed, in the middle of decorating for Christmas!
I love ladybugs. Beautiful and gentle, soft and colorful, they are sweet simplicity. I have always helped them along by moving them on flowers and leaves, or to a shady spot against a fence.
My mom never gardened but she did plant carnations in the spring, the ones that trailed up the fence on pieces of twine, with creamy pink fluted edges that smelled of a soft summer day. I would sit with her with dirt under my fingernails and we would dig holes and pat the plants into place, and she would point out ladybugs and say, be gentle - ladybugs do no harm.
That ladybug watched me trim the tree, unannounced, as I hung family ornaments that are too precious to imagine, handprints and first grade pictures, and family stockings with our loved one's names. I got to wondering if God ever lets our loved ones drop in for a visit to help ease our longing. Aiyana and my Dad were so much like ladybugs - beautiful and gentle, doing only good and making the world better.
I cradled the ladybug gently as we walked downstairs and down the long hall to the porch, and nudged it onto a Verbena plant still in flower under the overhang. Thank you for dropping by and raising my spirits. Everything is connected.
