Curious, how change, which comes upon us inch by inch, day by day, can in a moment crash into our consciousness. How, though it was there all along, you don't notice and don't notice. And then you do, all at once.
Like my little girl, how finally I look at her toddling around the house and see, she is growing so fast, she is not my baby anymore. She is saying bye-bye and all done and daddy. She is noticing; she is discovering every day.
Or like the gold and red leaves I crunch through in the yard, how I had forgotten, thought perhaps it was spring? Perhaps it was summer? How have we landed here, the days shortening and the cold stretching out its icy wings?
And we have been in Madison for over three years now, and the Falcon Heights apartment in Minnesota seems just last summer and yet also seems so long ago, the corners of the space fading from our memory (what did the bathroom mirror look like? how many closets?).
The tide, which rises up so slowly, has taken me by surprise, has washed me into the current. And I float on.Labels: family, memories, nature