One.

Our 19-month old tugging me outside with a very specific purpose in mind. What was the purpose?

Flowers. He wanted to go pick flowers in the forest.

In 90-degree heat at 3pm on a weekday afternoon, that is what we did.
And I loved every second.

Two.

Our eight-year old humming along to Glenn Gould's Goldberg Variations as he went about his playing.

Three.

The melancholy joy of seeing two of my favourite people - Becca and Rachel - tiredly pose for a goodbye photograph for me, despite a disinclination on both their parts. I am not posting an image, not because they don’t both look beautiful - they do - but because some moments should stay imprinted on hearts and stay small.

It is funny to me how many people mistake them for each other. I fully believe they are sisters, as they carry some similar physical, vocal, and personality traits. But I have never mistaken them for each other and they have always been wholly separated to me, possibly because they are two of the most unique individuals I have known, in all their eccentricities and quirks and radiating warmth.

I have many great memories of them together, but I know the details and etchings to a degree that always makes me puzzled when others confuse them, or comment about them looking like twins. They are both beautiful but they are each so much their own individual that I can’t put myself in the place of seeing them as indistinguishable. I know there’s a sociopsychological term for the phenomenon where members of a particular ethnic or racial group recognize the characteristics of their own, whereas to someone from a different region, they might all look very alike or similar. I get it.

The idea that the more time you’re around a group of people or individuals, the more familiar you are with the characteristics that make each unique and distinguishable, and therefore entirely separate individuals.

So there’s that. Pretty girls, beautiful women inside and out.