What I learned from Elizabeth

July 10, 2010

Elizabeth grew more sure of herself as she grew older.  Her beauty was more assured, she knew how to write better, she took more daring photographs, she matured and blossomed and showed great promise as an artist, as a reader, as a student.  Lenesa said she wondered what she would have brought the world.  Something with giving in its nature.

Now I think of all that she gave me as my daughter.  She was loving, and funny, and creative, and thorny and independent from a very early age.  As the years go by, I have grown in my love for her, and I hope that I too am growing more wise and independent and blossoming in some way.  Part of that has to do with being her mother.  Learning from motherhood, learning from her. 

I missed you yesterday. This is the dinosaur that gets me through. I love you forever.


Nicholas.
How Dina Aunty relished her memories. Mummy and Daddy were the same, talking about their yesterdays and smiling in that sad-happy way while selecting each picture, each frame from the past, examining it lovingly before it vanished again in the mist. But nobody ever forgot anything, not really, though sometimes they pretended, when it suited them. Memories were permanent. Sorrowful ones remained sad even with the passing of time, yet happy ones could never be re-created—not with the same joy. Remembering bred its own peculiar sorrow. It seemed so unfair: that time should render both sadness and happiness into a source of pain.

> From A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry