Traits

I don't really know her, the seventh grader helping with the younger children, but her mother is the sort of friend with whom I wish I spent more time: lighthearted, loyal. I'm busy and hardly talk to the girl but, even so, catch glimpses of her mother in her. The way she tilts her head, smiles without showing teeth, rests her hand on a little one's back. My heart swells a little, thinking of my friend and how her daughters become her.

No one ever suggests I've become my mother. More's the pity.

I saw myself in Clementine the other day. She was cramming her sister's foot into a sparkly tennis shoe, sighing and saying (with great frustration): "Work with me, Charleigh!"

Then she put her hand on her hip and said to her brother: "Cade, I have a job for you. Go out on the porch and get the cat bowl for me, ok?"

Cade, nine years her senior, looked down at her and back up at me. "She sounds exactly like you, Mom!" he laughed. And there, in his relaxed stance and expression of patient amusement, I saw again: his dad, my ex-husband.