My daughter gave me a mug for Christmas that I have been using daily. Not only is it the best color green (same as my favorite tattered t-shirt, almost the inside of an avocado) but also, undeniably large, which plays nicely into my new year's resolution of one cup of coffee per day. Best of all is the phrase "no plan B" painted in black by Billy the Artist who sells his mugs in a wonderful art gallery in Collingswood NJ, where we celebrated the winter solstice.
So, no plan B, I say to myself, not so much when buying dessert nor choosing random books from the library. But declaring myself as writer: no plan B!

Recently my fifteen year old son wrote a paper analyzing an Alice Walker short story. He had spied the avenue in which the main character (a poor black woman in the jim crow south) found her power. I thought to myself when I read it, this would make Alice smile. No this would make her beam. One day, they should sit down and share a cup of tea.
On a different day, in a rather casual tone, he mentioned that he didn't believe one person could really belong to another. I looked at his young face and thought of Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, which he has yet to read. When one of her character's says "Don't. It's a bad word, belong. Especially when you put it with someone you love." it struck a chord with me when I read it. I wonder if I knew that to be true when I was his age, then had to be reminded a decade or two later when I read her book. I believe our children do come to teach us the things that we have grown to forget.
"You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you." Kahlil Gibran