Ah, look at both my daughters’ hands. Looking at them, I remember a day, when Michaelyn was a toddler, that my mother and sisters and I were sitting together round her kitchen table. I looked at my mother’s hands, and then at my own. Mom noticed, and told us about a time when she was a very young mother, at her baby’s funeral (my little brother Michael died just a few hours after he was born). An elderly lady approached her after the service, and took both her smooth young hands in her own knotty wrinkled ones. She looked at them, and said to my mother, “Once, my hands looked just like yours”. She may have said other things; that is all Mom remembers. She didn’t say whether she was comforted by the elderly lady’s words or not (so typical of my Mom, those little mysteries). Mom has always had beautiful hands. I inherited her long fingers and my dad’s shorter, squattier palms (it’s a spaghetti and meatball combination). I’m not sure whether Michaelyn’s hands look more like her maternal or her fraternal grandmother’s… but anyway, I’m getting bogged down in genetics and nostalgia. Here, in this picture taken at her after-graduation party, she is flashing a ring we gave as a graduation gift. The ring had a simple, fairy look… just right for Michaelyn.
And what do I think of that? Graduated. Well. I haven’t given myself over to deep thoughts about it yet. I have this sense that I still need time to process, time to grow up a little more before I really address it. Whatever ‘it’ is. I have allowed myself though to drink in just how amazingly beautiful and grown up she looks (and even acts!). Her very own person. So much promise. I did a little lip-chewing, a little focused breathing during her graduation, and even for a few hours afterward. But I’m ok now.
The weeks before graduation were a flurry. Both Maurya and Michaelyn performed in a dance program at the school and sang in choir concerts. Michaelyn’s choir went to state. And she was in a play too! After her extended, sad mourning over our move from Washington, there she was, dancing around onstage in a long long skirt. What a whirlwind month for her—choir parties, play parties, pre-graduation banquets. I am so glad she has those memories.
Maurya played the piano to accompany her choir’s “Pie Jesu”, and I cried (silently, no sobbing of course). She played flawlessly, which was miraculous (I know how nervous she was). Ezra graduated from elementary school. Meisha sang songs in a little awards program with all her classmates, and I finally (very belatedly) started the kindergarten registration process for Nora. There are reasons I drag my feet.
A few months ago, Maurya learned Billy Joel’s “And So It Goes” on the piano, secretly. It is one of my favorite songs…haunting and heartbreaking and hopeful. She arranged to surprise me with it for my birthday, and I was surprised. And moved. Meanwhile, Michaelyn (who had quit piano lessons and had even refused to touch the piano at all for over a year) sat next to me and cried bitter tears. Sibling rivalry is strange and sometimes inexplicable…but apparently, somehow, taking herself beyond that moment, she has recently resolved to indulge herself in piano music again. I hear her playing Enya tunes upstairs sometimes, and she’s getting better. More confident. Her playing stints are longer and more varied. I’m so glad she took the piano back for herself. It seems to me a graceful, grown up thing to do.
