“You are the diamond of my world,” my 11 year old daughter says to me as we get ready for bed.
I’m quiet at first because my children are often saying such niceties. Just as I’m thinking how wonderful it is to live with such demonstrative children she says,
“But you are not polished – yet.”
I ask her, “What do you mean by that?” – genuinely curious.
She pauses for so long I think she’s ignoring me. But then she responds. “Think of it like Buddhism. Like a flower that’s going to open. You are beautiful but you have not awakened the Buddha within – yet.”
I hold her close and kiss her forehead. I feel suddenly that little gap, that moment of acceptance and peace and a little bit of fatigue. I am tired and only a little bit sad but I am utterly teachable. I hold her and I ask her simply, “When will that happen for me?”
She looks at me with her tiger eyes and says slowly, as if explaining a very simple concept for the second time, “It will happen… when… it happens.”
There is not one small bit of doubt in her countenance.
Um, awesome.