One Good Thing

I haven't been on facebook in a while but today I logged on and somehow clicked on the beautiful face of my niece.  For some reason I felt like I wanted to see more of her.  I guess she just makes me happy.  She is infectious anyway and no one can be sad around her. . . I think I may ask her to move in soon!  Teach me a thing or two about life.  Anyway, I started clicking on one picture, two, seven, fiftyfive . . .

There she is with long hair, with braids, with a shaved head, pouty, dressy, tired, showing off her tats and that booty!  There was graduation, endless parties, fun at the beach, fun with friends.  Endless friends.

It's hard to explain the simple joy I felt at clicking back through the phases of her life (not to mention her hairstyles) to see that she had one.  HAS one.  My niece had and continues to have a richness to her life that reminds me of a painting I once knew how to make.  A balance.  A fullness.  Her photos are a testament to a woman with confidence because she knows she will be ok.  That her mom is fine.  And her Dad.  She is free from that responsibility.  Free.

My sister somehow flipped it out.  She did it.  She turned things around, she succeeded as a mother, as an adult, as a woman.  I am so proud of her.  I used to have a similar vision for myself and my children.  I didn't know what it would be: photos of Coleman playing hockey, Coleman and his friends playing chess, Coleman laughing as a girl puts ice down his back, Coleman at the beach as confident and free and happy and bursting with life.  Free.  

Maybe that's why I like movies and books so much.  You can dwell there for moments in time and your own life is suspended and you can feel hope spring eternal for all of the things that won't ever really be in your own life.  But while I clicked through those pictures I felt my life suspended.  I felt my niece's joy.  I felt her vibrant, beautiful, pulsating life in my chest and I felt so proud and grateful that she exists as proof of all of the things I've stopped believing in.

I don't know what I would do without that.