Mom’s Daily Love and Tea Quotations Continue to Inspire
In response to Dancing Elephants prompt 4 of 52
Inspiration comes in many forms. Sometimes it can be conveyed with an inspirational quote. And sometimes, it takes an inspirational action to go with the quote.
Whenever I’m asked for my favorite inspirational quotation, I respond with the following piece of verse from Langston Hughes:
Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die Life is broken-winged bird that cannot fly.
It’s fairly self-explanatory. Dreams are the things that give you wings, and if you give up on them, you give up on life. You may continue to exist, but you won’t live.
Vidya also asked, in her prompt, how our favorite quotes made us feel, and what role they played in our lives. Reading inspirational quotations, regardless of whether the words actually inspire me in any way, always reminds me of my mother’s love.
When I was young, my mother would pack me a school lunch. It would contain a sandwich, an apple, some carrot sticks wrapped in a wax paper twist, a can of apple juice, and an inspirational quote.
She drank Salada tea. At the time, Salada tea bags had inspirational quotes printed on the tags. (Modern Salada tea bag quotes seem to lean more toward humorous sayings, at least judging from what I see when I do an image search.)
Every afternoon, when she took a rest and drank her cup of tea, she would save the tag to pack in the next day’s lunch. Sometimes, the tags would be shaded in various hues of brown, because the tea spilled onto it.
To me, those tiny tea bag tags were the best part of my lunch. Because they let me know that even though we were apart, my mom was thinking of me while she drank her tea. I could feel her love in every lunch bag.
Oddly enough for an inspirational quote, the actual quotation was irrelevant to the inspiration. What inspired me was the act of love demonstrated by carefully separating the tag from the tea bag and packing it in my lunch.
The quotes might make me smile or nod my head in agreement. But the inspiration came from love.
This is a response to the prompt by Vidya Sury, Collecting Smiles:
Some of the other responses to the question that I really enjoyed included:
This article from Blogs by J featured my favorite quote of all the ones offered and one I was unfamiliar with before now. It talks about the bravery of birds, and I think it goes very well with my favorite quote.
Lucia Landini couldn’t pick just one favorite quote, but she was able to narrow her selection down to her top 4. They have a lot in common and overlap, so it was almost like building a 3D perspective.
Dr. Preeti Singh takes her favorite quote through time, showing how it has inspired others. Each person took the starting quote and enhanced or elaborated on it to make it uniquely theirs.
Read all of my responses (so far) to the Dancing Elephants Press 52 weekly writing prompts: