The “Scavenger Hunt” word this week wasn’t hunted for or scouted out.

It wasn’t stalked or ambushed.

It didn’t hide while I seeked; sought it out; peeking into shop windows, staring at clouds, keeping watch for it; straining my eyes and my imagination; willing myself to see it in both the shyness of shadow and boldness of light.

The word presented itself in the form of a present.

A gift given to me by a neighbor and friend.

He spotted it, he said, in the dusty corner of a second hand shop.

It reminded him he said, of me.

Of what he imagined I would have looked like as a child.

I didn’t quite see it the same.

Didn’t see the resemblance.

The physical characteristics didn’t quite align when compared side by side.

But….something about the color of the eyes reminded me of my cousins.

The smile, of my brother.

The blonde hair, my mother as a child; kept forever young and towheaded, frozen in time, captured and preserved in age faded photographs, stored themselves in dusty albums, on dusty shelves, tucked into dusty corners.

The audacity and daring; the coy bravado, captured softly in a mocking stare that had yet to harden, a stare that looked directly at the artist; a tribute to, and a foreshadowing of, the false confidence of my father who never looked away and never once blinked first.

And I suppose, I think, as I gaze upon the portrait, that I am indeed made up of those bits and pieces.

Woven and held together by the cast off parts both real and imagined, of those who came before.

Those war torn factions that still battle inside of my head have settled into an unsteady truce, formed a fragile alliance, relaxed their borders and let down their guard upon the unclaimed landscape of her face.

And I sense, just below the surface, hidden from the artist and perhaps from herself, a resilience and a sense of peace; the ability to forgive and move on.

A state of grace.

I recognize myself, ever so slightly, in this.

Plant my flag on this unfamiliar solid ground and claim this territory for myself.