The Meaning of Life and grocery shopping!

It was just a quick trip to the grocery store to get food for dinner. My Chinese son, aka Lulu, and I were preparing for his last meal at home, before he returned to Santa Monica City College to finish his sophomore year. Many of you have heard stories for the last four years about this remarkable young man who came into our lives totally by chance and won our hearts and became one of us.

Well this story might be the best...so far anyway. Driving west on Kingsley Avenue, Lulu leaned over to me in the car and said, "Mom, I've been wondering. What do you think is the meaning of life?" Both of us chuckled and he said, "That's a deep question, isn't it?" and so the conversation began, through the grocery story, while we cooked, while we ate once "Dad" got home, and while Lulu did the dishes, until I finally went to bed.

This amazing young man, whom we love like our own, never ever ceases to amaze us.

One of the comments he made as we drove home from the grocery store was, "it just seems like we don't have a lot of time on this earth to do good things." I talked about the presence of God and the journey of living a life giving thanks to God by doing good in the world...a concept that this precious boy has shown us he understood for a long long time. And I reminded him of the poem/prayer on the cabinet in the kitchen that said just that. We talked a bit more about about doing good as much as we can whenever we can, and then when we got home, I took the prayer down and gave it to him to read. "YES!" he exclaimed, "This is exactly what I was trying to say."

That was Lulu's last night with us. The next day I took him to the airport to fly back to California. And the next afternoon our lives changed significantly...the conversation about the Meaning of Life couldn't have been more timely. Thank you, dear and precious Lulu.