These are my daughters, I suppose. But where in the world did the children vanish?

The speaker confronts a familiar parental shock: the sudden realization that one’s “children” have become near-strangers—adolescents or young adults—while the parent’s inner image of them remains fixed at an earlier age. The wry “I suppose” signals affectionate disbelief, as if the evidence of grown daughters is undeniable yet emotionally unassimilated. The second line turns the feeling into a small mystery—“where…did the children vanish?”—capturing how time’s passage can seem less like gradual change than like disappearance. The quote distills nostalgia, parental ambivalence, and the bittersweet comedy of family life into a crisp epigram.