This is my second go at this blog; I started it in 2014, and didn’t keep it up for very long. Not because I didn’t want to write, but because I had a lot of trouble getting over my nerves about posting. It’s difficult for a shy person to put their words out there. But I have as much to say now (and more) than I did two years ago, so nervousness be damned.

I’ve taken my title from the scene in It’s a Wonderful Life when George rediscovers the petals from his daughter Susan’s rose in his pocket. When he realizes he’s alive again, he notices first that he’s deaf in one ear, second that his lip’s bleeding, and third that Zuzu’s (as he calls her) petals are back in his pocket. In the midst of his terror, that everyday sign of life is the first good thing to happen to him since his crisis began.

George and Zuzu the Gingersnap with her rose.

Zuzu’s petals have come to represent that to me: the joy that comes in the midst of sorrow, of fear, of the most painful times when the beauty and wonder of life reasserts itself. And to me at least, it’s always in something simple and unexpected, like finding rose petals in your pocket.

I’m going to try to write in the spirit of those moments.