scarlet begonias

"Once in awhile you get shone the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right."
Doesn't that Grateful Dead line fit bringing up kids? The other afternoon my so-often so-difficult son was sitting at the kitchen table and said, "Mom, the kids in my class were teasing (X) and I told them not to." What seemed like years ago, I'd told him about X's difficulties in life, and was sure, like most things I say, that it went in one ear and out the other. But here was a small, sudden rainbow, reminding me that ideal motherhood is a state of mind -- the more patient and dogged and unattached to immediate results you can be, the more little gifts may come your way....