perfection

The other day I saw a picture of these lovely chinese roses, dozens of their white petals fading to a light magenta at the roots. It reminded me of something I drew in chinese watercolor from drawing class when I was little, the teacher hands out grades to all of the drawings at the end, the most elusive of them all was a "99"...a year of classes later, I had yet to get one

this was the painting that did it for me, it was many petaled and the ridges were just like this one, and just as thickly layered, and the pink is the exact same shade, which I'm still not so fond of, objectively, though of course now the color is tinted over with some sentimental value.

a "99" was perhaps more important to my mother than to me, that first 99 she didn't get to see right away, because she was in a hospital in beijing with my father, for brain surgery.

a few days later my aunt took me and my cousins to visit her, lying on the hospital bed, she looked on quietly as my cousins bestowed upon her all these pencil drawings of bunnies and suns and clouds, and I went last, and I gave her that painting, and I gave her that "99"

I know it's probably not nice or even healthy to think your present is superior than others, especially when they are for an occasion like this, when no present is quite the right fit, and I probably shouldn't feel like I have to earn my mother's admiration and hard-to-come-by praise (though I always do),

but I did feel disproportionately good that day, it was the most poetic timing that fate could've had the tenderness to arrange, and it was perfect.

years later I revisited the school and some paintings were on display, one was of grapes, it was nowhere nearly as good as mine (and I'm not just saying that from some personal bias), mine, a couple years earlier, garnered a 98, this one had a big 100 written on it in red. They probably got another teacher for the class, I think. In any case, the painting took me back to my first 99. Not my first 100, because my teacher then didn't believe in perfection, but then again, she didn't know the story of my pink roses.

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