Chloe - moving on

This baby girl of mine is about to graduate and move on to a new phase of her life. I have been thinking so much about this as we have been doing all the last quarter activities that happen with seniors in high school. I have been trying to grab any minutes where we can spend some one on one time together. We have had lots of opportunities lately because of her dependency on me to get her places. Those precious moments in the car have been a blessing to me. We recently saw a movie together and there was a line in the movie that really struck me. The young lady in the movie had not grown up with her mother, her mother had left her when she was nine. She was helping an older women find a lost love of fifty years and there was this moving scene where the older women came in the girls room to see if she was OK and she was sitting there combing her hair. The older women asked if she could comb her hair for her and then she said this one line - "One of the great pleasures of life is to have one's hair brushed". For me it was a moving scene as I thought about how the girl probably did not have that "pleasure" from her mother.

I have thought about that all weekend for some reason. I thought back to my young life when my mother cared for and brushed my long hair and even when I was a teenager how I loved for her to braid my hair and brush it for me. I love to brush my girls hair. I always have. When I was little I dreamed of the girls I would have and the hours of brushing and combing their hair. I know that sounds silly but I love the connection I have while their hair is tangled in my fingers. Maybe when they were little it was not always a "pleasure" but for me that connection for a mother and daughter brings an untold amount of pleasure. Both as the daughter and as the mother. I especially have been thinking of the times I have combed and brushed through Chloe's hair. Her soft blonde fine hair. How this little one now "grown-up" and going on to new adventures will hopefully remember those times when her hair was brushed. That there were many hours of connection between us and that I hold it in a special place in my heart as I do the time spent with my other daughters now grown and gone from home. Time really does go by fast when you look back at all that has transpired. Now my middle child is transitioning into adulthood and I don't have to many more years before the last child will transition through that same door. I am grateful that we have these small "pleasures" to connect us for always!