This is not the picture or the moment, and yet it is. My wild girl, all her own. — This is not *the* picture or the moment, and yet it is. My wild girl, all her own.

Watching Melby and the flickering bits of sun through my half-opened eyes feels like something between a memory and a dream. I rarely feel so relaxed as a mother, as I do now, lying horizontal in the warm morning sand, witnessing my girl dig in the quiet inlet to Hendry's beach. She is catching fish with a stick, wading in the shallow water, except the fish are bits of seaweed she carefully lays across the end of her stick and carries back to me, an offering at my feet.

Usually Melby insists I play in some particular fashion; more often she achieves whatever she thinks she wanted, only to ask for the next thing and then the next, but now, in this peaceful moment, she is content for me to lie watching her. I wonder, again, if I am calm for once because she is playing peacefully, or if she is playing peacefully for once, because I am calm.

And I'm sure, really, that both are true. There is no greater evidence of the complex interplay that is all relationships than the parent-child dynamic that can so quickly escalate to a place of stress and anger or so quickly return to something peaceful. Both parties are culpable and both are responding to the other's energetic output.

Over a month into quarantine, I wouldn't say I'm relaxed, but there is some element of suspended reality that allows me to feel slow in ways I don't normally feel slow. And that, in turn, I think has given Melby some peace too.

She is wearing an oversized red gingham swimsuit-- a hand-me-down from one of our generous older girlfriends. At this point, I can't remember what came from whom, but each new thing we uncover is a treasure, filled with even more meaning because it lived a life before now, it is filled with the wisdom of earlier 2 year olds. The suit puffs out around her torso, a little blue bow clipping it all together at her back. Her thighs are starting to tan and she has her first freckle on her right cheek.

I feel both in awe of this girl and also slightly terrified by how much I love her. I still can't believe she came from my body, and suddenly it occurs to me that she no longer clamors to crawl back inside me. This revelation makes me want to crawl inside her somehow, to stay attached, feel what she feels, see what she sees.

Sagging with the strength of ocean breeze is a wispy top-knot in her silky hair that doesn't tell the story of the tantrum that went along with it this morning, but I know. I think about it watching her. How I motioned to put a pony in for her, she screamed NO! and as I, choosing my battles, went to put the brush and hair ties away, she collapsed at my feet, immediately sobbing. I asked her to use her words and she unraveled. She wanted a pony but didn't want a pony but didn't want me to remove the option of the pony.

I look at that tiny knot of hair and for a moment it is all the twists and challenges of motherhood in one-- not just fixing my child's problems, but giving her the space, the language, the ability to recognize them for herself. To name them. So they have less power over her. So she can call them out into the open and either ask for help in solving them or create her own solutions. But then also demonstrating and teaching compassion-- the ability to recognize someone else's challenges and help without being asked, to give freely.

Sometimes I get mired in the details. Everything I do right is some thing I am also doing wrong. Every line I draw I question. I just want to do right by my girl. And often the moments, the days even, are harder in creating a future I think is right for her.

I crane my neck to look at her more clearly, and she shouts, "Lie down, mama!"

She has started calling me "mom"; she must feel, somehow, how much it leaves me gaping, like the space between us is far too great. She is practicing her distance from me. But in this moment, she calls me mama. She is my baby, not a baby at all, and I listen. I lay back, grateful that today, all she wants from me is to be quiet and watch.

And what else do I have to do?

Watch this girl. She is now and she also, somehow, feels like a memory. She feels like forever.

I push my head back into the sand, and keep my eyes loosely tracking my small fisherman, the girl who grew inside me and is now growing me daily in always unanticipated ways. I feel an overwhelming urge to call her into my arms, to beg for a hug, to swallow her up, but just then she runs down the edge of the water, her arms spread out in the wind, her single stick acting as a divining rod for adventure.

She looks back and almost catches my eye, but then, keeps going.