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As my youngest child finishes her last weeks of high school and prepares to move across the country for college, I feel a wide range of emotions.
I revel in her success, her choice of school, her independence and strength. I am touched by the occasional glimpse of my little girl in a fleeting moment of insecurity. I am frustrated by her often short, rude responses to my attempts at affection.
And I am already missing her.
I am reminded of my grandmother, for whom she was named and who I also miss. My grandmother had a stroke shortly before my first daughter was born and I stubbornly expected a full recovery, naming my baby girl after icons of my youth instead of after the strong woman who had made such an impression on my life. About a month later, my grandmother let me down for the first time in my life and slipped away. I inherited her ring, a circle of gold that ties me to her forever.
Within hours of conceiving my third child, I knew with absolute certainty that she was a girl, that she would be born on the second anniversary of my grandmother’s death and that she would bear my grandmother’s name. Someday she will inherit the ring.
A gold thread weaving all of us together, a never-ending circle of life.
Tags: circle of gold, circle of life, gold thread, ring