From just a few days ago

It was a cold, rainy and physically trying day. One of those Days / evenings when the Pulse Ox never went above 88, and Pulse never dropped below 105. One of those days when common sense kept saying, "Stay home you idiot".

But that option was the most impossible of all.

My one daughter from the area (I have two here, plus a son) and I hitched a ride with my X wife to go watch "our" other daughter give a College Presentation. This one (the College Senior) came to the city to live with me when she was thirteen. Both of us searching for many things, but growing to learn and find so much more. During this time and through her I met and eventually adopted (emotionally) the third.

The Presentation was Scientific / Biology related, and lost me after its title. But I managed to smile and "I hope" present an image to everyone else that I completely understood everything.

She was smooth, intelligent, in control... and suddenly all grown up.

She has always been a very expressive person when she has talked. Her facial / body language, and voice projected the same joy, determination, and confidence that I saw for those few brief years we were together.

The Presentation finished and the group was in the outer Main Commons area. Many discussions were going on between many different persons in our group. Everyone shifting like cards of a deck being shuffled, and then that time came for parting of ways.

For a brief second my College Senior, and my adopted daughter met to say a few words. In those fleeting seconds (from a short distance) I saw a vision of two young best friends. Gone however was their "big hair", and the Jeans and shirts of teenagers.

Instead they were dressed as fashionable, confident, and maturing Women in the midst of their Careers.

Eyes glistening, and locked in the way of old friends, with expressions of happiness I remember from so long ago, I suddenly was given a rush of warmth and contentment knowing that these two were "Making their way" to success. I knew that for these two, all things in their Universes were beginning to meld.

These few seconds were enough to make this worth any discomfort that accompanied it. But the night was not over.

My second daughter, her mother, and I stopped for a sandwich before starting the 1 hour drive home. We had a simple meal, and then proceeded west to our home areas.

I have not spoken much of the trip in but from my viewpoint it was a pleasant time. Idle conversation that one has in these situations, with a few more glimpses of history. But I believe the deciding moment came on the way home when in conversation my X wife begins the tale of the Big Toenail and a baby's Circumcision.

Briefly it was a blow by blow description of the procedures that were performed on the baby, with parental reactions, and the removal of the big Toenail of a Grown Male. The details given are some that I classify as "uneasy thoughts" and thus not to be shared. Trust me.

Now, although this conversation lacked the same "esteem" of the College Daughters Presentation, in its own right it brought a smile to my face in a knowing exposure of traits thats I knew from so long ago.

Either experience was worthwhile in and of itself, but everything added together made this one of the most memorable evenings I have spent in short term memory.