Clear

These days we go outside a lot.  When the morning sun brushes a wide wash of light across the lawn we go outside, and as the warm air creeps further up the porch each afternoon we go outside.  Sometimes when she's sleeping we let her rest inside and we don't stray far from our own yard.  I wanted to capture this perspective of my little girl, wanted to remember what we see when we peek in at her, curled up on the couch.  So I snapped a picture for the album.

Except it's not clear to me exactly what happened.  I don't fully understand light and angle and reflection, I typically just point our camera at something pretty and press the button.  As I sat here this evening and pulled the photos from the card, her feet resting in my lap, this wasn't the picture I was expecting.  The first one showed up and I saw her tucked into my palm, some trick of physics, and it reminded me of the challenge we've faced in trying to hold Celia with open hands.  We would have preferred a longer term lease, but ultimately, as much as we claim her, she is not ours.  And so we try to figure out how we can hold on to her while we let her go.

I saw these pictures though, and something became to clear to me.  Her feet won't always be in my lap, and my hands won't always feel full, but she'll be here, our girl, she always will be.  She's in the nooks and crannies of me that didn't even exist before she did.  She'll be well-documented in photographs, but she'll also be in the corners of my heart and in the creases on my face and in the crevices of my memory.
Clearly, she always will be.
JEB