There Are Moments and Miracles

There are moments.
Aha moments! I'll never forget the look on her face moments.
My world will never be the same moments.

Darling daughter has many assignments in her studio art classes.
She was welding a hot air balloon earlier this week.

While video chatting last evening she said "Mama, I want to show you something."
With the sweetest of smiles she pulls a large canvas into view and there I am:
17 years old, my Senior Year photo painted onto canvas.

Darling daughter had taken to college a coveted old sewing tin from my Great Aunt.
In it were small treasures, mementos from home,
and squirreled away in there I suppose was this picture.
In the photo, I am a year younger than she is now and it is not difficult to see
that she is my child, my likeness, and yet, not me.

Of all the images in the world to paint for an assignment, darling daughter chose this one,
and even added a few letters of my HS nickname Rennie in the corner.
Peculiar she would do that since it was discussed pre-birth as a possible name
for her ...along with Paisley, a paternal name, also considered.
I have been thanked many times for NOT using that one.

I will never forget this moment. Her peeking behind the canvas,
holding it up so I could see the entire piece on my computer screen,
all the while saying "it's not finished, but I wanted you to see."

What I saw was,
my darling daughter seeing me.
Not just as her Mom, not just a middle aged, often poorly dressed,
occasional authoritarian figure, with jiggly bits and double chins.
She saw me as we all can see ourselves with eyes closed and hearts open.
17 and beautiful, bursting with dreams and plans.
That summer of 7o I don't yet know that
many of those dreams will come true and many of them won't.
I don't know that I will be so blessed with my children
and will mourn both parents passing way too soon. I am frozen in time,
unaware that hearts really can and do shatter, but keep on beating out a new rhythm.

There are moments when you feel your children inside your heart
as you felt the movements inside the womb.
Tangible, thumping, beating, a living part of you.
I see my child as the young woman she is, as the little girl she was,
as the woman she is becoming. The miracle is; she sees me.

She told me as she worked on the canvas there were difficult areas
she struggled with and she was able to go to a mirror
and study the length and breadth of her nose, of her brows, to copy.
The miracle is; she sees me in her, and wanted to capture the moment.