My solo audience and a dead response

This is not a poem. Everyday after school, my daughter sits at our hall. I can see her looking at me from the corner of her eye as she opens her school bag. From it she takes out her art book and other tiny books. She heaves a tired sigh as she begins to leaf through the pages.

I make it a point to accidentally go and sit next to her. Accidentally, I peek at what she is seeing. And then I say "Wow! That is such a wonderful picture!" or "My god, you write really well." She smiles. And I can see her joy welling up inside her.

For her, most of what she does, is for me alone. She will soon grow up. A day will come when I will continue to be proud of her. I will continue to tell her "My god. How wonderfully you write." And she will say to me "Will you stop being such an embarrassment?".

By then I will have got so used to praising her, and so used to actually being proud of her, that I will not be able to stop myself. Not be able to stop being an embarrassment. And she will never know why I so gush after her.

It is different with someone older. When I write something or take a picture nowadays, I don't even care to show it to the world. The world has a way of praising all the wrong things. And saying all the wrong things as criticism. There is only one person I care to write or take pictures for. I show them only to that person. My solo audience.

And every time I put up a poem or take a picture, I wait for my one and only audience to react to it. Sometimes, almost a week has passed. And I've waited for a response. Like a dying tree waits for rain. And when I see that she has time for everyone else, but my work, which is essentially ONLY for her, it hurts.

I have to find a solution to that within myself. If I hurt, I am to blame, because I expect a reaction. A response. If I can so re-construct myself that responses and reactions are out of my system, where I create for the pure act of creating itself, that day, maybe, things will be a lot different.

And my single audience can react to everyone else, whoever they choose to be worthier than me.