Granddaughters

A couple of weekends ago, I attended a training on how to teach "mindfulness" in the classroom. In the training, they showed us the first three lessons: Mindful bodies, mindful listening, and mindful heart. In the mindful heart lesson, they asked us to think of someone who always made us feel really happy- who made our hearts feel full of love. I was surprised to see that my niece popped up as the person who does this for me.
My niece lives in Southern California. I don't see her that often. I love seeing her when I do, but she definitely isn't who I thought I would think of when I think of someone who fills my heart with love. But she's the one, she's who popped up.
When she popped up, I pictured her peering around the corner of the doorway of my room last Thanksgiving. I remember her watching me, thinking I couldn't see her, and wondering if she was trying to figure me out, seeing what that aunt of hers was like, wondering what she might be like some day.
When I pictured her doing this, I pictured myself at that age, and I realized that she's a little version of me and then I realized, that she's a little version of my mom. She's my sister's kid, so she doesn't have my genes, but in the same way that I have half of my mom's genes, she has a quarter of her grandma's genes: she's got my mom in her too. I can't really see yet that I'm my mom's daughter, that she lives on in me, but I can see that my mom is alive in my niece, in her grand daughter, and that maybe when she's filling my heart with love, it's maybe my mom filling my heart with love.