A Lotus Grows in the Mud Read Free

know what triggers that physiological response.
    A smile is an indication of a happy heart, and when you smile it changes your perception. It can create a better day. As frivolous as it might sound, studies have proven that even if you don’t feel like smiling, if you force yourself to smile, you will change your state of mind. By doing so, you can actually raise the immune-system boosters in your blood.
    The question is, Where does that smile go? Why is it that as we grow older we smile less? Could it be that we are looking for happiness and fulfillment in all the wrong places? Is it fear that stops us from being happy? Have we forgotten how to seek those simple pleasures that brought us such joy as children? To find the spaces between our thoughts that allow these joyful memories to flood back?
    I suppose the key to holding on to that smile is to try to remember how much you smiled when you were young. Never forget, because that smile still lives in you, no matter how old you are.

 

    Happy to be in the Purple Balls reading group, the lowest grade, I thought I was special because I was the only one in it! (Author’s Collection)

growing pains
    Here’s to the kids who are different; the kids who don’t always get A’s, the kids who have ears twice the size of their peers’, or noses that go on for days.
Here’s to the kids who are different, the kids who are just out of step, the kids they all tease, who have cuts on their knees and whose sneakers are constantly wet.
Here’s to the kids who are different, the kids with a mischievous streak, for when they have grown, as history has shown, it’s their difference that makes them unique.
    —Digby Wolfe, for The Goldie Hawn TV Special, 1978

 
 
    M y toes find their footing in each hole in the chain-link fence as, step by step, I climb my way to the top. The smell of chocolate chip cookies egging me on, I pray that I won’t snag my shorts on the sharp barbs of wire at the top.
    I am making my daily assault on the barrier that separates me from my neighbor and first boyfriend, David Fisher. David lived a few houses away from our redbrick, three-bedroom duplex on Cleveland Avenue, in a suburb of Washington, D.C., called Takoma Park. To get to his house each day after school, I have to scale this fence in the yard of my next-door neighbor, Mr. Morningstar.
    I could reach the Fisher house the easy way—by walking around the block—but that wouldn’t be as much fun. Instead, I relish the challenge of climbing that fence, because the minute I have achieved my mission and landed with a thump in his backyard I will be leaving my empty house behind and entering a world that is very different from my own.
    Mrs. Fisher stays home all day baking and cooking and keeping house for her four boys. Mr. Fisher comes home each night after work and doesn’t go out again. Their home is filled with noise and school projects and fun. There is a miniature golf course they made in the backyard out of mud, complete with waterfalls, and, best of all, right next door to the Fishers lives my best friend, Jean Lynn.
    Each afternoon when I return home from school to my dark and silent house, greeted only by Nixi, my pet Dalmatian, waiting for me on the front porch, I telephone my mom at the Flowers Gift Shop to let her know I’m home. My house always feels so empty, so lonely.
    “Okay, honey, I’ll come and pick you up just as soon as I close the store,” she tells me. “Now do your homework, and be a good girl for Mrs. Fisher.”
    David has two sets of teeth. He has grown his second set, but his old set won’t fall out, so his mouth is jam-packed. His lips can no longer meet. No one can understand a word he says but me. The teachers in school always sit me next to David. I have become his trusty interpreter.
    My mom arrives on time to pick me up after work, sporting her straight skirt and pointy high-heeled shoes. She always looks so beautiful. She says hello to Mrs. Fisher and the