As part of Chunhui Children’s Mom’s Time Museum initiative, we received a handmade bouquet. An ordinary-looking object, it carried the story of 876 days of shared growth between six-year-old orphan Luo Ling and Chunhui Mama Zhang Qin. When a child without a birth family meets a caregiver bound not by blood but by love, gifts once tucked away with care become keys to the heart—witnessing how kinship beyond genetics blossoms through life’s cracks.
The March breeze was still chilly as Chunhui Mama Zhang Qin flipped scallion pancakes in the kitchen, the spatula in her hand clinking lightly against the iron pan. The front door creaked open with a click, followed by the rustling thud of a backpack hitting the wall—Luo Ling was home from school. Her shoes shuffled twice at the doorway before she came running in, her pigtails catching fluff from the poplars near the school gate.
“Mama!” Luo Ling tugged at the hem of Zhang Qin’s apron, her eyes curving into crescent moons. Clutched in her hand was a bulging plastic bag, with scraps of colored paper peeking from the top. “Close your eyes first! It’s a super, super big surprise!” Her little shoes scuffed against the floor, her nose slightly damp with sweat, and her hair still carried the faint scent of playdough from kindergarten.
Zhang Qin smiled, set down the spatula, and let the little girl lead her to the living room. Her fingertips brushed something hard in Luo Ling’s palm—just as she had guessed.
“All done!” Luo Ling’s hand fluttered away like a butterfly, revealing a bouquet made of paper and crinkled ribbon. Six lopsided flowers were bunched together with wire, glue marks visible on the pink petals, and one yellow center stuck on backwards. Luo Ling traced shy circles on the floor with her toes, her ears blushing red. “Teacher asked us to give it to the person we love the most... I had to cut it many times before it came out right.”
Suddenly remembering something, she fumbled a wrinkled card from her pocket. It was scribbled in crayon: “Happy Mama’s Day”, signed with three overlapping hearts.
Zhang Qin gently ran her fingers along the edges of the flowers and recalled the first time she met Luo Ling last winter. The girl huddled on the orphanage sofa, clutching half a biscuit, eyes fixed on the TV but too afraid to move closer. On her first night at Zhang Qin’s home, Luo Ling curled up under the quilt with just a tuft of hair peeking out.
Zhang Qin had tucked a hand warmer by her feet and placed a handmade teddy bear stitched from an old towel beside her pillow. “If you get scared,” she said, “hug the bear—it’ll watch you over through the night.”
The scent of scallion pancakes wafted from the kitchen when Luo Ling suddenly ran back to her room. She returned with another crumpled plastic bag. “And this too!”
Inside was a little egg-shell ornament. Last week, during breakfast, Luo Ling had learned to peel eggs from her sister Tingting. Her first intact shell had been carefully kept in a cookie tin, now painted with a smiling face and glued to a bougainvillea leaf.
Zhang Qin remembered a day last month in the neighborhood garden when Luo Ling crouched down and spent twenty minutes gathering bougainvillea petals. “I’m going to make the biggest heart for Mama!” she declared, lying on the ground, and tongue pressing against the corner of her mouth as she arranged the petals by size. Her fingers turned red from the cold, but she didn’t notice.
By the time her wobbly heart of petals took shape on the grass, the sunset cast a golden glow over her hair—as if every petal had been outlined in light.
At dinner, Luo Ling placed the bouquet in a Coke bottle vase at the center of the table. Under the lights, the not-so-perfect flowers looked incredibly soft—like time itself in this blended family. Her sister Tingting would always save the softest part of the fried egg for Luo Ling. Her older brother would quietly adjust the reading lamp when she reads picture books. And Zhang Qin still remembered the moment Luo Ling first climbed into her lap, whispering “Mama, hold me”—how her heart skipped a beat.
Halfway through the bedtime story, Luo Ling suddenly pulled something from under her pillow. By the soft bedside lamp, Zhang Qin saw it was a perfectly flattened cherry blossom petal, its edges slightly brittle. “I found it at school today. Doesn’t it look like the pattern on Mama’s knitted scarf?”
The girl’s eyelashes cast butterfly-like shadows under her eyes, and her breathing began to slow. Leaves rustled in the wind outside. The handmade bouquet cast a shadow on the wall, swaying gently in the lamplight—like real flowers blooming quietly in spring.
Zhang Qin often thinks that the bond between mother and daughter must live in these scattered, tender moments: Luo Ling’s triumphant cheer when she first peeled an egg without breaking it; her serious concentration while laying out petal hearts; and that bouquet with visible glue stains--imperfect, yet heartfelt. These small gestures, like new buds in spring, take root in each other’s hearts and slowly grow into trees that can weather any storm. Looking at her child’s sleeping face, Zhang Qin suddenly understood--Love was never about grand declarations, but the gentle starlight reflected in each other’s eyes through countless ordinary days.