Today my dearest friend and mentor would have been celebrating his 80th birthday.

LaoMa and Selden would be filling their house with Magnolia blossoms that envelope you in the most beautiful fragrance when you went into their home this time of year. I remember him telling me once that I would never be able to forget when his birthday was because the blooms would always remind me. Just like him to believe a whole species of tree was put here just to remind the world that he had been born this time of year.

And, often, he got his way when he wanted something.

Thus begins a new tradition of walking through neighborhood and capturing images of “LaoMa Flowers”. May we all have the time stop and smell the flowers today - remembering his stories of days as a big nose foreigner in China, his passion that prompted him bring back many wonderful forms, his fondness of the “guess what I’m thinking” game as he taught classes, his very big heart, his sharp tongue, his disappointments and his larger that life laugh that would envelope us all.

Today, I celebrate all the things he taught me, all the off-color jokes that made me cringe, all the lectures that never seemed to end, all the class-time story hours, all the (not so gentle) reminders that I still had so much work to do, all the pride he had in his students, all the encouragement and admonishment he used to bolster us with, and all the never ending insistence that I was still to fast.

Today I ran cane… just a little too fast …