concentrate

She had become somewhat of a stranger to me in her time away, and just as a familiar place can seem smaller and clearer when you return there after an absence, and any changes quite shocking at first, I found her somehow distilled, as well as in certain ways startlingly altered. Change is also loss, and in that sense a parent can lose a child every day, until you realize that you’d better stop predicting what they’re going to become and concentrate on what is right in front of you.

That’s from Second Place, which I just finished. Not my favorite of Cusk’s work, but some zingers in there like this one.