I called Talia my Li’l Butterfly, but somehow “Talia” became “TaTa.” That nickname in turn morphed into another silly toddler name of endearment, Tater Tot. Her days of being the Sitting Baby Buddha, however, allowed her gifts of quiet observation to flourish as one of her superpowers. Meanwhile, all these sweet gum balls and their trees with the silvery bark and the five-pointed star-shaped leaves brought back Virginia memories of me as a young boy playing with my cousins at the family cabins on the Rappahannock River. We ran barefoot across pine needles and hurt our feet on those pokey-spiked sweet gum balls despite our elders’ scoldings. The tree later became the symbol of Silverwood Circle many years later. Silverwood was cofounded by my first wife, Margaret, our friend Paul, and myself in the local forests near here. Eventually Silverwood grew into one of Virginia’s largest NeoPagan Wiccan groves back in the early to mid-1980s.