paradox

Tonight, we sat around the small corner table at my favorite restaurant, just the three of us. My mother laughed my favorite laugh, the one where she puts one hand on her chest and the other on my father's arm and tilts back her head--the laugh that colors her lilac in my mind and always makes me realize how young and lovely she truly is. My father ordered catfish, poured glasses of German wine, and made his signature jokes which, like him, are wryly clever, wise, and mostly good.

If they looked up from their plates and conversations, the other diners might have thought My! Look at this couple, this matched set, laughing with their mostly grown daughter in her pink skirt. What a calm, contained family of three they are--so happy and at ease with each other and the world, they might conclude.

And they would be partly right and also somewhat wrong.