In the list of memory posts from social media this morning there was a photo that I posted three years ago, but the photo itself was from 1988. It was taken when Kyle and I went apple picking in Upstate New York just a month or so before his second birthday.  In the photo, the trees and the thick grasses make for a lush green background. I am squatting down to make eye contact and he stands deep blue eyes wide as he savors the taste of a Macintosh right off the tree.  It is a sweet moment captured in time.

As Kyle said when I asked him, the love and connection between us is obvious; yet it is the depth of that love and connection that caught my eye this morning.  I enlarged the photo to where all that showed were our faces and the photo became another story.  We are now so removed from who we each were when the photo was taken; it felt as though I was looking at two other people.  I let myself stay in that place as I looked beyond the photo itself to the energy of what was going on in the moment.

I see a mother offering so much more than a piece of apple to her child.  It’s as if all the surrounding apples, leaves, branches, and blades of grass represent all the possibilities awaiting the child.  Here is the mother guiding the child in experiencing just this one piece, this one slice of the experiences that await him as he continues his life. In that simple moment is the representation of the child becoming aware of his own Becoming. He is not looking at her. His gaze is on what is around him as he focuses on the flavor of what he tastes. The mother offers one little piece of all the bounty that is around him.  Her focus is on him and his reaction.  She supports him in this connection with first discovery, with tasting the sweetness of life laced with the tartness of learning.