Wandering ALong the Path: Right Speech

My friend has returned from Europe, where she supported her daughter as she gave birth to her granddaughter. She sent me a photo of the adorable baby, and now she is struggling to get back to her life here, when a big part of her feels tied to the baby far away. I had a similar experence when my daughter had her baby in North Africa, and it was so hard to leave after we visited. I was lucky, as my daughter and her husband moved to the west coast after their daughter was a year old, but I missed the first sitting up, crawling, walking, first words etc. At least my friend has another granddaughter nearby, but I did not. It was over seven years before my next grandchild was born. But we adjust. We look at photos and FaceTime. We pull ourselves back into our groups and volunteer work and classes and friends. We learn to make the most of our visits and become intuitive about the perfect toy or book to give to our grandchildren. Loss and gain, gain and loss. We juggle these opposites and try to feel balanced. We are saying goodbye before we say goodbye, and practice, not perfect, is painful but necessary. Their lives are moving beyond our lifespan and we need to ehjoy them while we let go.