Emma sent me this evocative photo yesterday of Robin walking for the first time. There was something stirring about the photo, something timeless and elegaic. Robin is not only walking, she’s walking away from me in a sense, she is becoming a person, not a baby, a child, not a helpless infant.

Not something that is adorable, but something with character and depth.

Robin is turning into person, with her own evolving consciousness and awareness. And I get to see it in this stream of photographs.

Someone asked me the other night, as people often do, if I was sad not to be closer to her, to see this evolution personally and first hand. I have thought about that, and I think the answer is no, I don’t feel sad in any way about  Robin.

We live far apart, and there are geographic and emotional and practical limits on the amount of time we will spend together, the depth to which I will get to know her. I love her and enjoy her, but I am still living outside of that circle, and that is a comfortable place for me.

Robin has two loving parents, is in a wonderful day care program, has doting grandparents, including her grandmother, my ex-wife Paula, who takes care of  her for part of every week. They are close, and both are fortunate for that. But I love my life, and am  happy to be where I am, as I expect she will be happy to be where she is.

I have a saying, I often repeat it to myself, or to friends who are lamenting their lives. “This is the life I chose, I have no right to complain about it.”

How Robin and I will evolve together is uncertain, and there are certainly times when I wish it would be easier to see her, but that complaint would, to me,  dishonoring my own life, which I have worked hard to build and also love very much. I am not shocked when dogs get sick and die, I am not shocked when I can’t have everything I might want. This is the life I chose, and I am grateful for it.

Robin reminds of the relentless passage of time, how short our time here is, how important it is to live this time well. In another blink, she will be living her own life, perhaps raising her own child, and I will be a photo in a desktop folder, perhaps a vague memory or two, the strange grandpa with donkeys and dogs on a farm far away.

This photo touched a lot of chords with me. Emma has a gift for that,  her photos almost always have meaning. If I regret anything, it is that she and I are not a greater part of one another’s lives.

But she loves her life, as I love mine, and that was the point, wasn’t it? Isn’t that something to celebrate? Nothing is free, not even a good life. As you walk, Robin, I wish for the wind to be at your back, and you chose a life of freedom and meaning.