I wish you could see how she looks at me. Sometimes, when we are alone together, and she smiles that smile that makes her face flush, and she looks at me with eyes so tender that I could almost touch the softness, I think of you. I think, I wish my mom could see how much she loves me. That somehow, I could take a little bit of this incredible joy, and show it to you, without any conversations or disappointments. When she wraps me up in her arms and laughs at my giggles, and tells me how adorable I am, I think of you. I think about when you laugh, and Dad looks at you with those same eyes, and says to me... doesn't she have the most beautiful laugh? You do, you have the most beautiful laugh. And when I laugh like you, and my lover looks at me with the same eyes my incredible father sees you through, I can't help but wish you could see it. When I'm scared, and i'm vulnerable, and past demons rear their heads to remind me of my insecurities, and she holds my hand, and brushes away tears with her fingertips, and even cries a little with me, she reminds me of you. How many times have you done that with me, healed me from the inside out, soothed a pain that I can't explain. I never looked for, or expected that kind of unconditional love from anyone but my Mother; just like I never thought I could be comforted with my head on the chest of anyone but my Father. She loves me like that. She looks at me in a way that I honestly never thought I'd find outside of my family; like she understands my soul. She recognizes all of the pain that brought me here, and respects me for having weathered it. She sees the child inside me, who loves my family with the fierce love of a roaring lion. And when I'm torn by my need for approval, and the strength inside that demands I be true to myself, she gets it. She says it only makes her love me more, because she knows then, that I have the makings of someone who truly knows how to create a family and keep it together. She tells me, if I didn't care about what my family thought, or cry for the ways I might cause them pain, she wouldn't love me as much as she does. Slowly, inch by inch, I'm unfolding the places I've buried in my attempt to keep from hurting again. And when I unfold another part of me that makes me vulnerable, I think of you. I watched you tear yourself apart, to be raw and naked before Dad, and I watched him rise up to protect you and cover your wounds. I cried when I saw the gentle, new love bloom between the two of you, in ways I'd never seen in my 23 years as your child. The people who had defined love for me, were showing me how to redefine it as lives changed and time went on. And now, for the first time in my life, I wish I could show you the place inside me that has finally learned how to love another person, without being scared, without hiding parts of myself, and without the armor that I've carried for years. And when I look at her with love in my eyes, determined to fight for what is best for her, and hold her up as a person I respect and admire, I think of what you've taught me....... I think of you.