echo.
On time and the spiral.
Our daughter sent us a picture today. The grandson, in a pumpkin patch, looking every bit a little boy and not a bit the little baby he was five minutes ago. He is smiling -- how did she get him to smile, or even hold still, when all he wants to do is move and run and see what is next? He is already outgrowing the galoshes he is wearing in the picture.
He is beautiful, through and through, in a way that makes everything else beautiful. I can almost see it in myself, too.
I also see his mother, my little girl, when that’s what she was, an autumn many autumns ago looking for the same pumpkins. I see the galoshes I lost in the snow, a little kid playing outside unsupervised, fearful of the trouble I would get in.
It is all there, history not repeating exactly but rhyming, all those moments happening again and forever and a long line of tomorrows happening too. I want to grieve, but what is lost when I can see the whole thing in that little sly smile, those big eternal eyes?