12

My youngest turned twelve today. Since her third birthday, she has requested the birthday dinner be at her favorite sushi restaurant, and we have obliged. On her third birthday, I was just over a month into a photo project http://us365portraits.blogspot.com/2010/06/ where I took one portrait of someone different every day for a year.

It could seem like a lifetime ago to think of her as three, or that project being part of my daily life. Today, I had a flashback to one of the last houses that I painted, and it seemed forever ago. It was my common-law-brother-in-law’s house, and I was there today, swimming. I spoke to him six years ago about starting a business around my family’s restaurant’s spaghetti sauce…

Strange how the days unfold, folding time upon itself, bending forward and backward simultaneously. It is all beautiful.