Mind-Boggling

What I sit up thinking about late into the night, what fascinates me beyond the supposed confines of interest or reason, are the differences between my daughters.  Personality and appearance.  Taste and nature.  Voice and carriage.

   

Despite the fact that they are two very different little girls, they often remind me so much of one another that I forget who did what, and when.  I fail to distinguish if the younger sister has been influenced by her older sister, or is it the other way around?  Because they imitate each other equally.  They gather insight into their surroundings based on what the other one has experienced. 

They are connected, but separately.

They are alike, but entirely unique.  They may have the same fine strands of silken hair, but one wears it in golden lightness and the other in rich brown.

All of this runs through my head in broad swaths of thought, not usually stopping to land on any single, significant idea.  The truth of their intertwined individuality is just that -- truth.  So simple and expected that it won't bear deeper inspection.  It just is.  Billions of mothers across time and land know it as well as I: our children are different, one from the next.  Siblings may wear the same smile or ears or shoulders, and yet be vastly different in their temperaments. 

But as simple and expected as that knowledge is, it never fails to make me breathless in its wake. 

These girls -- my daughters -- are stamps of distinctiveness.  Never to be duplicated.  Is that not mind-boggling?

And here's where my mind exchanges broad swaths of thought for a pinpointed idea: whatever other children I may have will be exceptionally unique as well.  Their looks and tempers can be known only after rolling the dice to let them be born.

They don't even exist yet, but they are already matchless and -- again -- fascinating. 

Mind-boggling, I say.