For about a year now, Mika had been keeping a journal. Not a diary… she didn’t write about boy-friends or bad grades or the teacher with the voice that sounded like chalk on a blackboard… she just wrote a page of notes every week that described what seemed to be going on in the world around her. And she enjoyed going back a few pages every once in a while to read about what was happening a month or so ago.
When she was scanning the old pages, she noticed that she often wrote about her favorite “momiji”… the maple tree her dad planted in the front yard. In the winter, the branches were almost completely bare. It almost looked dead. But a few weeks later, she saw some tiny buds beginning to grow. And shortly after that, there were these tiny little green leaves. Mika thought they were cute. She thought, “They are just like puppies or kittens…little babies.”
By springtime, the leaves were bright yellow and green. In the morning sun, they virtually lit up like Christmas tree lights. And as the weather got warmer and warmer, they developed reddish colors around the edges. Mika thought “Mother Nature is really an artist.”
But then, the reds began to cover the entire leaves and they changed from red to brown and they began to look very dry. Soon after, the first leaves began to fall to the ground and Mika was saddened to realize that the leaves were dying. She closed her journal and set it down. She felt like her puppies…her kittens…her leaves were dying and she almost cried.
It took a few days before Mika had the strength to open her journal again. She was going to write her next weekly entry but she decided to review a few old pages before she started writing. She was reminded that the tree had been dormant, looking almost dead, but then it started to grow new leaves. The thought of the new leaves cheered her. On another page, she noted that her grandfather was bright and alert but living in a retirement home because he was getting old and needed assistance. And she found a page that focused on her new baby nephew who was celebrating his very first birthday. She put the journal down again and began to think. And then she looked into the mirror and thought some more.