How It Began

Not everything arrives all at once.

Some things
make themselves known slowly—

in small ways,
almost unnoticed
at first.

I have always been drawn to beauty.

Not as something to create,
but as something to move within.

Flowers were part of that.

Peonies—
full, almost overflowing.

Tulips—
simple, open to the light.

The Rose was there too.

But I kept a quiet distance.

There was something about her
that felt deeper than I could name.

Not unfamiliar—
but not yet known.

And so,
for a long time,
I simply passed her by.

Then something began to shift.

She started to appear
in ways that were difficult to ignore.

A name.
An image.
A quiet repetition.

At times, it felt almost playful—
as if something unseen
was gently placing her in my path.

Nothing forceful.

Just enough
to be noticed.

There came a moment
when I stopped moving past her.

I allowed myself to remain.

To look
a little longer.

To feel
what was there—

the curve of her petals,
the softness of her color,
the quiet presence she carried.

And something opened—

not outward,
but inward.

There were moments of emotion
that didn’t feel entirely my own.

A softness.
A grief.
A kind of remembering
without a clear origin.

I found myself sitting in stillness,
sometimes without words,
just allowing whatever was there
to move.

Nothing to solve.
Nothing to understand.

Only something
that asked to be felt.

Over time,
what had once felt like something appearing from the outside
began to feel
like something returning.

Not new.

Not separate.

Just…
recognized.

Before any of this,
my life had already been shaped by beauty.

Working with faces.
With metal and stone.
With spaces held for others.

Creating,
again and again,
with my hands.

When the Rose began to move through my life,
she moved through those same places—

in the pieces I made,
in the spaces I held,
in the quiet details I found myself returning to.

There is no clear beginning to this.

No single moment
that holds all of it.

Only a series of small openings—
each one
making space
for the next.