The Difference in Daughters

I have two daughters.  They are very different.  If you are a parent of multiple offspring, I am sure you sometimes wonder how they came out of the same place.  It is puzzling, but it is wonderful.

Both of my daughters are home at this moment.  One returned recently from a year working in Australia.  The other, a grad student in Florida, is home for a two-week visit.  I can't remember the last time I had both of them here at the same time.  (I also have a son who is currently living in California.)  It feels like a full house now, despite the absence of one of my children.  Everything is relative.

It's only been one day (not even) and we are figuring this thing out.  We tread carefully.  Although we seem to be on the same page ideologically and politically, there are differences in our world views at times, and so we are careful not to trample on one another's belief system.  It's a big house; if things get tense, we can retreat to our separate corners, thereby avoiding that which none of us wants.

But that is not the point of this post.  I love my daughters.  I love their differences.  I love my relationship with each of them, separate from the other.  I admit, it is sometimes difficult to balance the differences, to come across as fair to each of them, to try to make them understand that my love for each of them may be different in delivery, but not different in intensity.  I suppose that is something that only a parent of multiple children can understand.

But they are both here, now, and I love this.  It is a temporary situation, and I am intent on cherishing it while it is real.  Tonight, I will lock the doors, turn out the lights, and know that my two girls are both under the same roof.  In the morning, they will still be here, and we will drink coffee together, fix our different breakfasts, and go about our days separately.  We will come together many times over the next two weeks, and I will store these memories away to call up another time.  Just as I now call up the memory of the two of them, sharing a bedroom, sharing a family, sharing a life.

Perhaps they're not so different after all.