Too Much Like Me

As a child, she always was perhaps, always a little too much
like me.
We shared a love for old things,
even when broken,
living with a belief that all things can be restored.

Gentle. More fragile than she looked.
Tougher than you knew, she adjusted,
adapted, fit in. Utterly reliable,
but often at a cost most never saw.

A child of fairy tales and Disney,
of history and pondering,
her joy was released freely,
her pain held in. lousy at self protection.
I was perhaps
not the best role model.

Or perhaps I was. By the time she came back
to me, I already knew the path
from shattered to wholeness.
Simple love. Deep, simple, accepting.
And here she is, all grown up,
and the same way,
Ahead of me in ways.
always at work on herself.
May it always be so.

About this poem

My kids must be on my mind today. About my lovely daughter, now down in Virginia.

Tom