All I could think of as I stared into the darkness of our home listening to LoPa’s snoring, mother’s beating heart, and felt HoPa’s radiant body was what I wanted my Tree to be.

  I wanted it to be mother’s heartbeat, but how do you capture a sound and sensation in carved wood? How do you create a totem out of something so utterly indescribable?

  When I closed my eyes, the games rolled up like a tide. Stones and stones and stones, changing hands and shifting round the playspace. I thought of patience and thoughtfulness and the strategies of this simple game. A game so simple but so difficult to win.

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  I’d like to say I learned the lessons of Audra at one point or another. That I became patient, thoughtful. That I began to look at the world with longer sight. Seeing how one action would precipitate the next and how that action would lead to a thousand different potential actions and consequences.

  But I never did. Even still, I rush and blunder through so much.

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