Today, my daughter returned a present to me which I had given her years ago, when she was really little.
I have been visiting her in Brazil, for the last week and for several reasons, until today, she had not wanted to leave my side for more than a minute.
Part of it was the sweetness of being together again and part of it was a newly grown protective streak.
I do not speak Portuguese, Brazil is somewhat dangerous and well, she wasn't ready.
So for the past week, she and I have been joined at the hip, night and day.
She has translated for me, pointed things of interest to me, explained things to me and when I was not sure what to eat, she has ordered for me.
I have loved all of it and I have smiled a lot at the tenderness of the situation AND I have been itching for to a little independence, too.
But yesterday...
yesterday...
she said that she wanted to go spend a couple of hours with a friend and would I be okay by myself for a little while? Oh yes.
YES, I would be okay.
As she left, she made sure to leave me her cell phone number, checked twice that I understood where we were going to meet.
She told me to not walk around speaking English (to my myself?), asked me a few more times if I was going to be okay - and walked out.
Within thirty minutes, I was out of the door, walking by myself into the busy streets that she had showed me, smelling the same rich smells, seeing the same things, dodging the same crazy-fast cars - and yet feeling totally different.
Away from my daughter's sweet and love-infused buffer, I felt bigger, more engaged somehow.
When I walked into a store to buy a bottle of water and did not know how to address the man behind the cash register, the uncertainty felt a little thrilling.
And when I stepped out of the store, carrying my bottle of water and putting my change away, I felt as though I had just done something a little "biggering".
And and on my way to meeting her again, it hit me: this is what happens to our kids when they are little and we let them cross the street on their own for the first time.
This is what happens when we hand our teenagers the key to the car.
When we let them know that we love them and that we think that yes, they can do it.
And when, even though we are a little tiny bit worried, we step out of the way and let them grow their wings.
Those moments of independence, built on a strong foundation of "having been shown the ropes" and feeling safe that someone is waiting for us on the other side are so power-infusing...
It is in their midst that we hear our own voices and become acquainted with our very unique possibilities.
Sprinkling my kids' lives with plenty of these, when they were little, was really important to me.
I just never imagined that they would be returning the favor to me, many years later, and on the other side of the world.
PS: This is a quote I love, spoken by Peekay, the little African boy of Bryce Courtenay's novel The Power of One: "