different hands

Jubilee has been our daughter for 8 weeks now.  I don't know if she remembers anything but us anymore, at least not most of the time.  She rises happily in the morning and plays and eats and cuddles throughout the day like any toddler in a loving family.  Sometimes, though, when I look at her, I can tell that she is remembering.  When that happens, a dark cloud rolls in over her head and she weeps.

I used to think, during these times, that she was mourning the loss of her life at the orphanage, and maybe she was.  Now, however, I can tell that she isn't.  These tears seem to be coming from deeper within, and from farther back; from the street corner where she was left, perhaps, when she was only a week old. 

I will never be able to fully understand my daughter.  I know this.  No matter the weariness and woes of my days on this earth, I will never know what her tender heart has known.

My mother and I, after all, have the same hands.

And yet, she and I share the very thing my mom and I share.  It is hard to describe, is it not, you mothers of daughters?  It is what Jubilee mourns the loss of when she weeps, what I miss on my birthday, what makes my mother take her mother upstate to the cancer center every few months for a checkup, and what bowls my friend Liz right over when she looks at Cadence.

It is what Jubilee and I have been given.

Having the same hands, it turns out, has nothing to do with it.