Freedom

On Mother’s Day, my mom told me, my daughter, Cecilia, reminds her of me when I was little. She told me after I asked her. “Mom, does Cecilia remind you of me? Like when I was little?”

I asked her right after I had directed my daughter not to do something and my daughter answered me as she always does: with a dagger gaze straight through my eyes down to my core to break apart any remnants of my ego still lingering. And then free, fierce, and unfurled, she floated away from me, always seemingly prepared for the wind that will carry her away from us.

(Last year when my son told me he would never leave me, my then two year old daughter said in her own words that she would be moving to California.)

“Yeah, Jes.” My mom offered no explanation. Her tone didn’t have conviction, it wasn't compelling, and it did not possess any ironic humor to it. The truth was there, it was raw, and had my daughter not already been in the process of working me upside down, I would have felt nauseous, like a hangover sick, because my mother so cooly sipped her mimosa and spoke this obvious truth, easy, breezy, beautiful. And it had never really dawned on me. How could it not have?

At my very core, underneath the loud, often subtle programming to be quieter, and less opinionated, more beautiful and less bold. Beneath the fears and all the fumbles, hanging far beyond the self loathing and even deeper below the critical, cynical, snarky edge, in the deep hole of being with humor and furious rage to just exist in this life, is me.

True freedom, a wild child like my daughter. Tiny. Terrific. Ceci.