Growing down

So I am going to office, and what am I wearing.

Heeya's ICSE art project. A madhubani hand painted t-shirt. Peacock, et al. A mindfully selected pair of ice blue jeans that would go with the t. Heeya's blue sneakers her feet have now outgrown. Finally, Rhea's beach themed kiddo watch like the cherry on a sundae. 

As I looked at the thing in the mirror, yes definitively a quirky mish-mash but looking beyond that, more like who really am I this morning, the only epiphanic morning moment a Monday might allow, I felt I was a sort of product of my kids, rather than the other way round. 

A bit of Heeya's art, her vulnerability turned rebellion turned independence, her awakenings and her depths, her reflections, her criminal laziness, her moments of intense focus, her beautiful quiet. I observe, I marvel, I absorb, as she happens to life. 

Rhea's infectious entropy, her feverishly galloping exhausted, exhausting mind. Her hunger, her anxiety. The limitless curiosity and awe in her deep dark eyes that fizzles out by the time it reaches my spent soul but blazes brightly in her till the day is done, into the next. A bit of that too. 

Sometimes, often, I feel I am changing, growing, branching, rooting, becoming more of me, with the girls. Does it happen with every parent. Or only those who wanted another chance to childhood. Doesn't everyone start growing down at some point to come full circle.