dual personalities

I am home from my short, easy-breezy trip back east. I was smart this time and came home on Saturday so I had Sunday to de-compress and settle back into my world once again before heading to a jam-packed day at work on Monday. (And I also got a chance to clean up the house after the OM was alone for 4 days.)

Darling daughter #2 posted yesterday about my visit and she hit all the high points. We had a super fun time in and out of the City and in the suburban sprawl around it. We did what we love to do: estate-saled, looked at art, shopped at IKEA, went out to eat with her friends, drank wine, walked and talked.

Mmmm–diner food

But as a mother it is mostly wonderful to see where one’s beloved child lives and spends her time. Now I can picture where she is sitting when we talk on the phone. I know how she has arranged her things.

Her apartment is a block away from the picture-perfect U of Maryland sorority houses and also the Episcopal Church where my flyover friend Becky lived as a child when her father was the rector there.

I saw her office in the English Department at school.

I guess only a mother (or parent) can understand how important all of this is. I feel the same way after visiting daughter #1 in NYC–relieved that she has made a home for herself and that she has nice friends and that she has carried something of her flyover home to her new abode.

Sigh.

‘The Open Window’ by Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), The Phillips Collection

And I have a magnet to remind me of my visit.