DocAndersen
Each child in our lives is unique. They are baubles — small bits of glass that both reflect and refine that light around them. As a parent, we are given a lump, a clump of sand. It is our job to get that sand into a container. Not a finished container, and not yet glass, rather we take the grains of sand and put them into a holder. A place holder truly nowhere finished nowhere near the glass. We, along with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and neighbors, begin the creation of glass. But the majority of the glass that is to be made is done by the child. They consider the exclusion of impurities or the acceptance of the impurities. Glass itself is clear, without color and the impurities at times can add color.
The addition of color is wholly the child. As a parent, we work on polishing some parts of that glass of that creation that is our child. We buff those places that we can see. We do not touch the inner parts of the child. That resolution comes from within. We offer the impurities that we added to our polished glass bauble, but we do not force the impurities. There is a path to forcing the changes. Each child polishes their view of the universe and in that view moves towards the reality of reflection. That is truly the Their goal to create a perfect bauble that The reflects everything. The very refraction breaking the path of the light to send it off into the infinite.
As parents at times, we watch our children and wonder why they polish one part of their reflection more than others. We offer them proffer advice. Do this, we tell them. Listen to our words, and we are your parents. This gift that we give you will guide you. It will allow you to take the shape that you were meant to take. But as parents, we only see the shape we believe the child should take. We do not see what the sculptor wishes, what the artist within the eye of the child sees in the glass before them. We can only proffer what we know worked for us. We do not know what the glass will bring for our child. Some of it we know, we can predict what will occur. But we also have to accept the perfect reflection created in the glass by the artist that is our child.
(all pictures are of my daughter’s friends. Taken by my daughter!)
Lovely, I have her twin sister, enriching our lives.
she lived with us for almost 16 years. it was hard when she died.