You can not know how comforting you are. Which is really unfair given that you are my daughter and I’m your mother and those roles are supposed to be reversed.

Yesterday, I was worn. The varying stressors and anxieties that have inhabited my life keep gnawing at my overstretched strength. And something about your sweet, heart shaped face. The horn rimmed glasses your father and I slightly teased you about. Your endearing and loving expression. The compassion in your eyes. Without a word, you were comfort.

As we video-chatted, I sat on the back steps in the shade of the maple and mulberry trees. In the balloony canopy peaks of the pine trees bordering our home, grackels complained at one another about the state of their nests. Or maybe the greedy hatchlings. Or perhaps they were just crackling and grackling at one another in their old-biddy-gossipy language when they were actually discussing how lovely the day was. In melodic counterpoint, a chickadee kept singing its melodic three pitched chirp, the one I always heard as “skitty skirt” when I was in middle school.

I sat in shadows as the sun curtsied behind the mulberry tree’s thin branches and blinked into my eyes. I couldn’t concentrate on the grinding emotions. I was too busy closing my eyes against the brilliant sunlight which eclipsed my thoughts which settled my body into quiet contemplation. In the meantime, I cupped my phone, cupped your beautiful face, and felt your love. Your worried compassion. Your gentle silence.

Life is tangled. Plaited fates are intertwined with mine and choices made affect me. And, true to form, I take things way too seriously when, in the end, life will sort itself out whether I intervene or not. And so often, I am learning and re-learning that I need to step back and let life do its thing. The fated tapestry is wrapped on its loom. The Penelope fate weaves, skims the shuttle through threads and backtracks and unweaves and the world settles.

I settle. I sit in sunlight for thirty minutes and let the world just breathe. The dogs eased onto the sun-baked earth and, slowly, their eyes sealed shut. In slow waves, their chests rose and fell. And, again, my eyes closed and I sat in the mid-spring warmth. Sat in dappled shadows. And you held me as I held you and we held time and fate and did nothing.

Your silence was peaceful. A healing balm. And as my shoulders eased and my chest stopped feeling like concrete, I knew I could face the rest of the day. Watering flowers. Planting the last seven pentunias that are dried out and possibly dying. Making dinner and sitting in my comfy chair with my new lap desk and writing in my journal until I realized that I had already written in my blog and my exhausted mind could only cough out a paragraph.

I love you, Bean. Too often, I rely on you too much. I try to keep a healthy distance. Watch your growth and change and fight for your future without intervening…too much. Or stressing….a helluva lot. I want my fate line to be completely separate from yours. Be your shadow as you run toward your future with outstretched hands while I keep my hands firmly fixed behind my back. Let you be free. And I worry that how I bask in your comfort might be a drain on your emotional reserves. I don’t want you to feel like you have to “mother” me when I am the mother in the relationship. I want you to be independent and I want you to be yourself and come to me for comfort.

Yet you are a comfort. And you are a comfort. Not comma but. Comma and. You are my daughter. And you are a comforting presence. And I can’t stop being grateful for you.

Thank you for yesterday. Thank you for silence amidst bird song and the wind shirring through the pine trees. Thank you for your compassionate warmth that blended with afternoon sunlight sieving through mulberry branches. Thank you for…being you.

Love you. Mean it.

Mom