Outside/Inside

Posted today is a photograph of what filled the room outside of my mind as I sat in my daughter’s San Francisco apartment thinking about the entirety of my life to this point.  You will note the soft quality of light and an overall “feeling” of serenity.

Not so inside my mind.

Inside my mind, years and images and pinpricks of emotion clashed together.  This what happens when you see a loved one after they have been detached from your daily life for a long while.  It is sometimes difficult to reconcile the intelligent professional woman my daughter has become with the little girl that once ran to find me with tears in her eyes following some small infraction that occurred while playing with others.  The small girl I reprimanded.  Your children achieve a wholeness of life when they separate from you.  They push ahead.  They sometimes push back.

I have learned to accept and enjoy my daughter as an adult.

I am proud of her.  I truly mean that.

She has inherited her mother’s perfect smile and her mother’s calm.  I have learned how to become my daughter’s friend.  I have learned how to become her guest.  That’s what occurred as I sat in the serenity of her apartment.

At some point, friends and loved ones need become the same thing.

     --Mitchell Hegman