Vachon Imagined

It caught me, the way anything catches a moment and ties it to a miracle of connection.

A mother helping her daughter with her swim goggles.

Nothing extraordinary.

Nothing accurate.

Wholly unsymmetrical and unplanned.

And yet, there it was—the vivid disparity between what I should feel and what I do, beaming through a jagged reality I will never be able to soften:

I will never hold her again.

My daughter.

The one whose goggles I will never reposition again.

The one I will never hear through a bedroom door, laughing with her friends about boys, outfits, and dreams.

And so I linger here.

Not trying to make the moment mean something.

Not trying to make it mine.

Just participating in it.

Seeing, and then unseeing.

Watching this small, ordinary act pass through me while somehow carrying the weight of everything I have lost.

Her echo moves through my heart.

And for one brief moment, I am there.

A mother.

A daughter.

A pair of goggles.

A whole life contained in something so small.

And then the moment moves on.

But I don’t.

Not quite yet.

Don’t pull me out just yet.