I don’t know if this counts as a confession, not really, but I think maybe it’s a regret, and a quiet sort of sorrow that I carry, especially now that I’m older, 76, and the days feel shorter, and the memories feel sharper, almost painfully so, and I think about my daughter, the one who moved away, three states away, for her work, a software engineer, and she’s so clever, so good with numbers and logic, not like me, I was always more with the colors and the shapes and the way light fell, and I remember her leaving, and the ache in my chest, a physical ache, almost a phantom limb sensation, and how I knew it was for the best, for HER best, but still, still, and she visits once a month, like clockwork, and it’s a flurry of activity, and she brings groceries, and she fixes things, and she talks about her life, and I try to listen, truly listen, but there’s this undercurrent, this quiet whisper in my mind, a sort of cognitive dissonance, I think it’s called, where I know she loves me, and I know she tries, but I also know, with a certainty that chills me, that she wishes she didn’t have to drive all those hours, that she wishes I lived closer, or that she could just send money and be done with it, and it makes me feel so small, so irrelevant, and I don’t know how to articulate this without sounding ungrateful, or manipulative, and that’s the last thing I want. And I remember when she was younger, and I was younger, and I had my art, and it consumed me, truly, sometimes for days, and I wasn’t always present, not in the way a mother should be, maybe, and I think about the times she’d come into my studio, and I’d be covered in paint, or charcoal dust, and I’d be lost in something, and I’d wave her away, gently, but still, a dismissal, and I wonder if that’s why she felt she had to leave, to find something so completely different, so practical, so… UNAMBIGUOUS, and I think maybe I taught her, without meaning to, that passion was a luxury, and practicality was survival, because my art never really paid the bills, not consistently, and there were always lean times, and I know she remembers those, and she doesn’t want that for herself, and I can’t fault her for that, not truly, but still, the pangs are there. And now, when she comes, and she tells me about her algorithms, and her coding, and her colleagues, and I try to connect, I really do, but it feels like we’re speaking different languages, and I see the exhaustion in her eyes, even after a good night’s sleep, and I wonder if she feels the same way I did sometimes, about my art, that deep, hollow sense of unfulfillment, even when it was supposed to be everything, and I wonder if she ever just wants to throw it all away, and move back here, to this quiet little town, and sit with me on the porch, and just BE, but I know she won’t, and I know I can’t ask her to, and it’s just this quiet, constant hum of what-ifs, and what-could-have-beens, and a deep, deep sadness that sometimes, especially at this hour, feels almost unbearable.