If ...

If Stross were not my son, I would be a different person.
I hesitate to think of that woman and what she might have become.
What purpose would that serve?

I remember her youth.
Even her young adulthood.
But she never matured -
that young woman some thought wise beyond her years.
Never matured.

And yet she befriended me -
The me I recognize this day -
This imperfect me who is closer to perfect than she.
Whatever perfect means.

She remains my friend - still - amid perfectly imperfect days.
She knows I am well acquainted with imperfection.
In fact, perfectly pleased with its discord.
Its unruly unrest.
Its unsettling, unsatisfactory, undeniably flawed pronouncement of life.

She knows I sometimes I grow weary with imperfection's persistence,
Yet never weary with its rich contrast - its bold defiance of the wanting-to-be-perfect life.

Life.
Imperfect life.
It is imperfect.
Of course it is.
How perfect is that!
And what a mature pronouncement for an imperfect person to make.
(And how immature of that person to say so.)

I wonder if she - the one who never matured - would think it immature too.
She likely would.
In the way someone with perfectly framed thoughts regards imperfection and pronouncements about what is known or unknown about it.

Knowing but not knowing.

Imperfection.

Life.

That's what I think on this day.