The Love That Changes Shape

Mothers, Daughters, and Wild Geese

The evening of Mother’s Day, I looked out over the pond where we’re living and saw two Canada geese gliding across the water in the golden light. They moved slowly, close together, their reflections stretched long behind them. At first, I thought I was simply watching a pair making their quiet way across the pond.

Then one of them shifted slightly, and I realized there were actually three.

A tiny gosling was tucked so tightly against its mother that I could barely see it at all.

She was there the whole time, tucked so close to her mother you could hardly see her.

I stood there for a moment with that ache mothers know so well — the sudden remembering of small bodies beside your own. The years when your children moved through the world almost as extensions of you. Always close enough to touch. Always following at your heels. Always needing you.

Earlier that day, my daughters had taken me on a picnic for Mother’s Day. They are both grown now and living lives of their own, but they recreated something we used to do every spring when they were little. Every year during spring break, I would take them to one of our favorite spots near the sea. We’d spread out a picnic, wander along the shoreline, walk through the gardens nearby, and take photos together. At the time it was just a picnic. Just a walk by the water. You don't realize until later that those are exactly the days your children (and yourself) carry with them forever.

This year, they planned the whole day themselves.

We sat near the water again, just as we had years ago. We walked the same paths. We took more photos. And as I watched them laughing together beside the sea, I kept catching glimpses of the little girls they once were layered over the women they’ve become.

By the time I saw the geese that evening, my heart was already full of nostalgia.

Canada geese are deeply protective parents. Both the mother and father guard their goslings closely from the moment they hatch. Goslings can swim within a day of being born, but they stay tucked near their parents for safety and warmth. Adult geese are known to position themselves between their young and potential danger, hissing, spreading their wings, or charging if they feel threatened. Family groups often remain together for nearly a full year, with the young staying alongside their parents through migration and winter before eventually forming families of their own.

Watching that tiny gosling hidden against its mother brought all those years rushing back to me.

Motherhood feels a little like that, I think.

At first, your children are so close to you they are almost part of your own body and breath. You carry them everywhere — physically, emotionally, spiritually. Your days revolve around protecting them, feeding them, teaching them the shape of the world. Then little by little, almost without noticing, space begins to form between you. They step farther ahead. They build lives and homes and traditions of their own.

And that is exactly what is supposed to happen.

Still, there are moments when I miss those earlier years so fiercely. The days of sticky hands and spring picnics and little girls walking beside me near the ocean. The years when home was simply wherever we all were together.

But maybe one of the quiet gifts of motherhood is discovering that love changes shape without disappearing.

My daughters are grown now, yet they still remembered those picnics. They still wanted to return to that place with me. They carried those memories forward too.

There is something deeply healing in realizing the moments that mattered to you also mattered to them.

As the geese disappeared farther into the gold-lit water, the gosling still tucked safely between its parents, I felt both the grief and gratitude that seem to live side by side inside motherhood. The longing for what has passed. The joy for what remains.