In the cool this morning I went out to trim the manzanita bushes. They’ve grown unmolested for years. They were fine—healthy unremarkable bushes in my front yard.

That wasn’t what I wanted when I planted them. I wanted those throbbing twisted red branches that captured my eyes through my walks in the desert mountains. Could these live in my land?

These bushy little bushes weren’t bringing those desert mountain to me. What is missing? The mystery is under there. Was I brave enough to find them?

I had never taken the trimmers to get the extra foliage out of the way.

Clipping away the little shoots. I began to see the shape of the main branches and grew bolder. I didn’t knowwhat I was doing but the beauty I saw in the tree was my guide on what to cut away.

Then the sun grew hotter and I had to stop for today. The family is going to an art museum.

 The last sands are tumbling through the glass for my daughter’s childhood—she is tracking and crossing off the homework to finish her senior year. The teachers gave her syllabi and rubrics so she knows how to get it right. She has an art class as a treat after her hard work last year.

Careful mama that I am, I hope she has been given the wisdom to go into grownup life. Those instructions that guarantee an A+ are harder to find after graduation.

How will she know what choices to make?

Walking the museum we saw the results of a million choices. Why that stroke? Why that color? The reason and the action synthesize into these results. The cherished objects, highly valued and admired.

Those artists were guided in the same was I had been, cutting to see the beauty of the manzanita.

I don’t know why Van Gogh chose to paint his mother with green skin tones, or what she thought of it. I can’t explain every cut I made on the manzanita.

As my girl steps into the world, without the instructions of a teacher to guide her, I can let her know that beauty can let her know. She is the one who knows what beauty is in the moment. Mistakes will be made. We can both trust that her heart and her life is strong enough to recover as she keeps reaching for the best brightest and most beautiful.