THIRTY-EIGHT YEARS, TEN MONTHS AND TWENTY-EIGHT DAYS

I didn't know until a couple of months ago that my oldest daughter has long been planning to make a special trip to Brookings at a specific time in her life.  She asked if she could spend the night with Debra and me on her way there. 

Friday night she stayed with us.  Saturday morning she left for the coast.  Yesterday, Sunday, she was in Brookings standing beside her mother's grave.

She has had it in her mind for some time to visit her mom's grave when she reached the approximate age that her mother was when she died.

Her mother lived for thirty-eight years, ten months and twenty-eight days.  

Yesterday, coincidentally, our oldest daughter reached that exact same age.  

And she visited her mom.  

It was Mother's Day. 

The day the firstborn arrived.

The mom with her two-week-old daughter.

Five-month-old sitting in her bedroom on her mother's lap.

Sitting on the front porch in Stockton, California.

Sitting on the steps of the Chinese Bible College in San Francisco.

First Christmas at six months.

Meal time, using the same high chair her mom used when she was a baby.

Eight-month-old rocking with mom.

Sitting at a professional portrait studio.

Snuggling.

Nine-month-old with mom in the back yard of their Stockton home.

Sitting on the same front porch in Stockton, 
about five months after the previous front porch photo was taken.

One-and-a-half-year-old with her mother in their Carmichael, California home.

Closing in on three years old.

Three-year-old casting a curious glance in her mom's direction.

Two years shy of being a teenager, four years shy of being without a mother.

Spending time with Debra and me on her way to Brookings.

Dad and daughter.

Learning to love Koda.

Learning to pant like Koda.

Heading for the coast to visit her mom.