For Christmas, one of my daughters made me something to hang in windows in the front and back of my house. Everywhere she has lived, she's always had crystals in all of her sunny windows, and she knows I'm fond of putting them in rooms as well (although I haven't in a while). She tried weaving crystal beads into a double-helix form, with four color-coded ends that paired to mimic strands of DNA, ending in walnut sized clear crystal pendants. Making thin wire stay in a helix shape was difficult, and we're going to have to thread something through each one so that it stays like it is supposed to. These were labeled as gifts to me, but I recognized immediately that it was really meant for Rabbit. She has always had a thing for lights dancing across walls, and she especially likes when prisms throw tiny rainbows around a room. She chatters and jumps at them, and years vanish from her face. She is instantly a kitten again when she sees rainbows.
One of my gifts to the same daughter was a box with a piece of wrapping paper cut out in the shape of a fish, as a coupon to restock her fish tank that has been empty for a long time now. I couldn't just buy fish and keep them in the bag until she came over for the holiday. They would have died long before the tank was ready to receive them. I have her big tank in my dressing room, as the cricketarium-cruise ship where Agnes the lizard now lives. We went to the pet store intending to buy just a handful of small fish, to fit in her little desktop one. While there, before acquiring the actual live animals, I discovered she needed a heater for the tank, and a thermometer, and food. Suddenly this was turning into more of a present than I'd expected, but I was pressing forward, starting to gather supplies. At the same moment, she and I noticed a spectacular sale on ten gallon tanks specifically designed to hold the "glow in the dark" fish (naturally colored day-glo tropical fish). I made the call that it was a better deal than all the little piecemeal things I was buying, and we got her the new setup instead. The actual fish won't go in it until tomorrow, so we still didn't leave the store with any new pets. But we have a plan to buy a rainbow collection of them tomorrow. I think after all I got tonight, I'll let her do the actual fish-buying.
While we shopped, she shared a story with me. She told me of one of the residents in the nursing home where she works. This woman shared our appreciation for putting crystals in windows, to have rainbows dancing all over her walls too. Recently she took a bad spill and injured herself, and took a sudden decline after that. She had been transferred to palliative care, and was on a steady dose of painkillers and anti-anxiety medications. Her son was with her yesterday morning, when he saw one of the prisms throw a rainbow across her face, that stretched over her mouth, and connect directly with the photo beside her bed, of her and her husband. The son knew in that moment that it was time to let go of his mother, and suddenly he was at peace with it. By that afternoon she was gone. I am not sure I have heard a death story so sweet before.
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