There is a promise of fulfillment found in the starkness of an elementary student’s smile.
Housed in the hollows between past and permanence.
The result of a reluctant relinquishing of that outgrown and the expectant searching for the slow but steady showing-through of the still oversized.
Both the baby and beyond beaming back at us on a face freckled with the familiar and the future as it transforms right before our very eyes into everything it was always meant to be.