'Water Lily'

This is not a water lily. It is deutzia, a shrub flower, small and white and growing nowhere near a pond. But pressed into its oval frame with its petals open and its layers arranged just so, it becomes something that floats. The performance is so complete that the question of what it really is stops mattering. It has become the water lily. It has claimed the role entirely.

For a little girl, this is a good lesson. You do not have to be what you started as. You can decide what you are, arrange yourself accordingly, and hold that shape with such conviction that the world adjusts its understanding. The deutzia knows this. Now the girl will too.

For the girl who knows that becoming is its own kind of truth.