The Gift my Daughter Received

The Gift my Daughter Received
My daughter finished a course this week, and during the final class the instructor handed each student a gift: a word on a piece of paper that, she felt, captured the student’s essence.
One student received the word: “Adventure.” Another: “Listening.” Another: “Dancing.”
And my daughter? She received the word: Home.
The teacher explained that she had chosen this curious word for my daughter because she is at home in herself.
“And when I got that word,” my daughter told me, “I thought, ‘This is the greatest compliment anyone could possibly give me! To be a home! What’s higher than that?”
And that, I felt, was the highest compliment I could have received–from my daughter. To know that this daughter, who isn’t home much, and when she is home, seems to leave home as quickly as she can to return back to her friends, from whence she came.
And despite that, it seems, like me she knows that while home is never perfect, it is where the heart is. My heart and hers as well.

4 comments

  1. Wow, so beautiful and touching. I would have been touched as the child and touched as the mother. I have so much nachas for you, Chana Jenny!

  2. Beautiful!! I’m not surprised with an always growing, learning Mother like you. She knows she has a secure home so she can spend alot of time away from it yet still feel attached to it inside her, so much so that thats what her teacher sees when she looks at her. Your home.

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