I watch the internal struggle. I'm a single cell organism roaming inside her, I know her so well.
I see the wheels turning slowly, halt, reverse, move forward, halt and I feel it as all of her thoughts turn then to me.
My daughter; invited to spend the day with a friend and with the girl's family at the newly opened county fair, cannot decide if she's comfortable being in the crowd all day and more importantly if she can manage without me for hours on end. Her indeterminate time away from me is full of possibilities and for a girl who lives her life based on certainty, this is a hard choice.
Her hard choice is also difficult for me, different reasons, but maybe not...
I do the hardest thing I do in my life and I encourage her to go out there into the world away from me.
And for him, my other child, I console him for his lack of choice in where he'll spend his tomorrow.
Mysterious plagues are plaguing my son and we are frequent flyers as of late at Doctor's offices, blood labs and more and more so at the local Children's Hospital. He is a human pincushion with a tolerance I cannot praise him enough for. I am in awe of him and proud of him and worried for him and grateful that I can always be beside him, now more then ever as we figure out what exactly is going on inside him.
My daughter heads off to the fair.
Throughout her day she texts me on the phone I forced upon her. I wanted that for her, not just so I could communicate with her but so that she'd appear more typical and maybe begin to communicate with other typical girlies.
By the end of the day, she returned to me, to us and hugged me so hard, her face a glow and her smile wide. She gave me the play by play of her day and then pulled out her phone and showed me the sole photograph she'd taken. Somewhere at the fair, she'd seen a quote posted on a wall and it made her think of me. She took a picture of it.
"You may be just one person in the world, but to one person you may be the world".
Tearful as she shared it with me. Tearful as I closed my hands over her soft, young fingers, which held the phone, which held the quote, which held so much meaning to her and now to me.
"I think I mean the world to you Mommy".
I laughed then, because I thought she related so deeply to this quote based on me meaning the world to her.
And I realized that in fact there is no difference, none what so ever; who is the world and who is the person seeing you as their world.
I remain so very thrilled to the core of me - so thrilled to have this gift of a girl know in her heart that she is and always has been, will be forever and ever and ever the world to me.
9,000 times a day I feel the love of the world.
9,000 more I feel the love of the sun, my son.
Dear Sun and World,
I love you my children,
Very truly yours, The Moon
