For those of us with children.

How different the meaning of “precious.”  Also “alive.”  What the self rearranges.

There was a time.

In the beginning, the excitement of puppies.  That generosity.  The concept of dependence revised.

A dawning recognition involving hope and helplessness – their power.  Sheer organism.  Complexity.  Alive, mobile, emerging.  What wears away, gets broken.  What heals, what hardens.  Your part in it.

The changing nature of survival, and terms like “health,” “okay,” and “wellness.”

An awareness of trajectories: expansion versus maintenance, collage versus carve, assembling as opposed to mending.  The children, the parent.

What persons are.  Attachments.  Difference.  Freedom.  Control.

The blowing snow left in their absence.  The ways they vanish, into themselves, their people, cracks in the world, airstreams and oceans.

How control rarely changes hands, nearly always remains invisible, what no one grasps.

The erratics of growth, the scale of unexpected development, of motives, of attention.

Intention and the noise inherent in communication.  The stage of sighs – their nuances.

We age.  Our eyes grow joy and sorrow, and both look like pride coupled to grief.

Randomness of adulthood.  Vagaries of time and consequence.  Learning curves like tangled thread.

Inevitable dismissal.

N Filbert 2012