Holding Hands

Oh what love, holding my daughter's hand, so small within mine. She always accepted my hand. Not like so many children who find the game in running just out of reach. No, she always took mine. She continued to do so even as she grew past the age that it was required for her safety. How big a gift could one person give as that?

There was a period in her middle years when I let go of her hand often when we walked together, until finally she asked me why. Doing so had not been conscious on my part and to learn of my reflexive action erupted such sadness and the horror that I'd give such a strong message counter to my heart. It was a difficult span of years, not with her, but my discovery that I couldn't reach my husband within the marriage in which I'd placed such hope. Perhaps it was my deep feelings of unworthiness and unlovableness that led me to drop her hand, as if even she couldn't possibly love me.

It still makes me sad, fills me with regret to think that I could have dropped her small hand when we walked back in that time. Yet there is solace now. Even though she is grown and on the threshold of starting her own family, she will let me take her hand when we walk out together.

How many images and words and expressions are contained in this simple act of holding my daughter's hand, and her mine. It is our statement to the world. It is our quiet agreement, our magic created out of the string of days and years we've walked through together.