Beautiful has always been the word I want to use when I speak about Agnese. I feel a sense of reverence around her. I even feel a little shy.
So I try to tease her to cover my shyness, and she responds in a brusque manner in order to avoid (I think) her feeling of shyness with me.
Agnese is beautiful, but not delicate. She loves to be outdoors. She loves trees, and animals, and lots of space to run and walk and look at the sky. She loves to ride her bicycle. She also likes pretty things, I think, but she doesn't want to admit it. There is still so much of the energetic kid in her heart, and I don't think the core of that will ever change. She loves horses, and I know that one day she will ride them.
Agnese is simple in the way she expresses herself, and simple in her affection. I have begun to learn to appreciate the strength of that simplicity, even as I prod her with my silly humor. She needs to come out more from herself, but in her own way. She doesn't have to be forced.
An interior space is growing within this young woman. She enjoys company and friends, and yet there is a positive desire for solitude, not from fear but because she senses a life inside her that needs to be cultivated and nourished. I see this, and I think she knows that.
Still, I am loud and grandiose and expansive in the way I spread my personality all over the place. As I watch the children grow, however, I have begun to think that I am not as "insecure"--in real life--as I imagine myself to be when I am when I am in a negative frame of mind. I am, by nature, a rather large person, and the family is okay with that. They love that about me. It is insecurity that tempts me to withdraw, and shrink, and disappear.
When I am big and strong and a little clumsy, but happy, they flourish.
Agnese has a sense of humor, especially about the genuine things that happen around the house. She really does not need "jokes," because she has a glimpse of the irony of life.
Something grows inside her. I feel the desire to build and foster a home that is a place for her to grow, a firm ground that has plenty of space for her to explore and discover things, and that will give her strong steps for when she goes forth into the adventure of her own vocation in life.
