Vivian lay back on the emerald grass and gazed up into the infinite azure. Behind her, Vivian’s mother knelt before the rosebushes, spreading mulch with a trowel. Mother’s trowel made a soothing, swooshing sound as she worked. Vivian smiled and watched a cloud make its way across the sky.

“It’s so good to be free,” the little girl mused pleasantly. “Like that cloud.”

“Freedom is important,” Mother agreed. “Freedom to live your life as you choose, freedom to make decisions for yourself.”

Vivian considered this. “I don’t think decisions are a choice.”

“Nonsense. Of course they are. That’s the whole idea.”

Vivian rolled over to look at her mother. “I think decisions just happen.”

“They just happen? You have no control over what you, yourself, decide? That’s preposterous. If you couldn’t choose to make a decision, there’s no freedom at all, and that means no options.”

“Think about it, Mother. If you have to decide to decide, then you have to decide to decide to decide. And you have to decide to make that decision, and so on, until forever!”

Mother tapped her trowel on the ground. “You have a point there, darling.”

“But if deciding just happens, if it’s something you do naturally, without thinking about it, then it makes sense.”

“Vivian, my love, many decisions require thought. You’ll realize that as you get older.”

“That’s true. At breakfast this morning, I had to choose between toast or a scone. It was hard to decide.”

“You see? It doesn’t just happen naturally.” Mother troweled some more mulch onto the soil. “You do have to think, sometimes.”

“That’s true, but I didn’t have to decide to make the decision, did I? You said ‘toast or scone,’ and then I thought about how sweet and melty the scone is and how crunchy and fun toast is and finally I decided I wanted the scone. I didn’t choose to decide, it sort of happened. Like a hiccup.”

“I see. No matter what you did, even if you’d decided not to choose, you still would have made a decision.”

Vivian leaned up on her elbow and grinned at her mother. “Right! It’s just natural!”

Mother extended a finger to beep Vivian on the nose. “You are precocious, Vivian. Very precocious.”

“Could I have toast tomorrow?”

Copyright 2006 Amy Frushour Kelly. All rights reserved.

Reproduction by any means prohibited without prior written consent.

To eat is to survive to be hungry.—Alan Watts

Vivian lay across the window seat, tracing patterns on the glass and gazing out into the garden, where her mother’s rosebushes stood frosted with snow.

The entire house was filled with roses—Mother kept three bushes in the little conservatory so they could enjoy the blooms all year. Vivian liked the roses, although sometimes she wished her mother liked another kind of flower, too. Roses got boring after a while.

Mother entered the room and sat with Vivian on the cushions. “Have a good Christmas, then, darling?”

Vivian rolled over and smiled. “Yes, thank you. Did you like the necklace I made you?”

“I’m wearing it now. See?” Mother opened the collar of her blouse and fingered the tiny beads. “It’s lovely, Vivian. Like you.”

Vivian reached out with her finger and gravely touched the tip of Mother’s nose. “Happy Christmas, Mother.”

“Happy Christmas.”

Vivian rolled back to the window, but Mother lingered on the cushions. “You’re awfully quiet. Is something on your mind?”

Vivian touched the glass the same way she’d touched her mother’s nose. “Thinking.”

“About what?”

“Wants.”

“Oh? Was there something you wanted for Christmas that you didn’t get?”

Vivian hesitated. “Yes and no. I was thinking yesterday about eating.”

“Eating.”

“I get hungry because I need food to live. Just so I can live to be hungry again.”

“That’s terrible, Vivian! There’s more to life than eating,” Mother chided.

“Maybe I’m not saying it right. I just meant it’s the same. I want something, then I get it and when I’ve got it, soon I’ll want something new. No matter what you get, there’s always something else to want.”

“You’re so precocious, Vivian. Catastrophically precocious, sometimes.”

Vivian shrugged. “There’s something I want, but I don’t know what I’d do if I got it. Because what’s next? I think if I got it, I would always be happy. But what if I wasn’t? And what would I want next?”

Mother took Vivian’s hand. “We all want, my love. It’s part of being human. So what do you want?”

Vivian glanced down at the wheelchair near her feet. “I want to walk.”

Suddenly Mother was hugging her tightly, rocking Vivian back and forth and weeping into her hair.

“Or a model submarine to play with in the bathtub,” Vivian murmured. “That would be fun.”

Copyright 2005 Amy Frushour Kelly. All rights reserved.
Reproduction by any means prohibited without prior written consent.

Vivian propped her chin on her hands and looked down into the grass. A ladybug was making her way between the green blades. Vivian reached down and gently nudged the insect with her finger. The ladybug didn’t appear to notice. Vivian giggled and rolled over onto her back. The ladybug might have noticed if her finger was ladybug-sized. But little girl-sized? No.

“What are you laughing about?” Vivian’s mother was on her knees, diligently pruning the rosebushes nearby.

“My fingers.” Vivian held up her hands and regarded her fingers closely. Such strange, long, tentacle-y things. She wiggled them. “How do I know they’re fingers?”

Her mother shrugged. “How do you know they’re not?”

Vivian frowned. “I don’t know. Maybe they’re not fingers, after all. Maybe they’re elbows.”

“Maybe you overanalyze things,” Mother replied.

“I can’t help it, words are interesting. What if they weren’t called fingers, they were called something else? Would that change my fingers? Would it change how I used them?”

“Other mothers have daughters who want to talk about ponies and princesses,” Mother chuckled.

“What if ponies and princesses were called zounds and zebras?”

“They’d still be the same thing, Vivian.”

She rolled her head around to look at her mother. “How do you know?”

“These, for instance. What I’m holding. What are they?”

“Pruning shears.”

Mother shook her head. “‘Pruning shears’ is a label, words we use to mean something. You should never confuse a label with what it stands for.”

“But they really are pruning shears.”

Mother sat down cross-legged besides Vivian with the shears. “Give me your hand, little one.” She fit her daughter’s fingers into the handles of the tool, motioning them open and closed. Then she held the shears and traced Vivian’s fingers along the blunt side of the blade. Finally, she helped Vivian clip an errant stem from the rosebush. “Now. Describe them again.”

Vivian wrinkled her nose. “Heavy steel clippie thingy that makes a shhk! noise and cuts off roses.”

Mother laughed. “It’s hard, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think there’s a word that fits.”

“Now try describing what pruning shears are without words.”

Vivian picked up the shears and lopped off a leaf. “That was easy,” she observed.

Mother smiled. “See? ‘Pruning shears’ is just a few mouth noises we make when we want someone to think of pruning shears. Words are labels.”

“I like when you explain things like this, Mother.”

Her mother leaned over and chucked her gently on the chin. “There’s no explanation for how I feel about you, little one. You’re indescribable.”

Vivian hugged her mother. “So are you.”

Copyright 2005 Amy Frushour Kelly. All rights reserved.
Reproduction by any means prohibited without prior written consent.