Samira

one day each year i am reminded why the internet was invented & what its exact purpose is. that day is today: my mother’s birthday.

may 2nd sneaks up on me every year which puts a daughter like myself, living half-way across the globe, at a severe disadvantage. the story repeats itself, as seasons tend to do: april comes and goes, and before i know it may 1st arrives like a cruel time-bomb, ticking the hours down to mom’s birthday. in fact, it usually already is my mom’s birthday.

but as quickly as the hint of panic comes, so it goes away.

because, like last year and the years before, i search the web for flower delivery in the southern Dutch town of Breda. and yet again, without fail, the order in my universe has been restored:

one long-stemmed rose for each year she’s orbited around the sun.

happy birthday, mom!

“Mom was a world all her own…
We were a quality of landscape, Mom and I.”
–Scott Bradfield, The History of Luminous Motion