My daughter is somewhere over the Atlantic right about now, February 18, 2008, if all is going well. Tonight she left for Paris for a 4 month study-abroad program via the University of Michigan.
I remember the day she graduated from kindergarten and how I cried to another parent. I knew these years would fly by and that mother laughed, yet they have. As each school year would begin, it seemed an eternity to the end, then suddenly the end was in sight and another year was just around the corner.
Each year I took pictures of our three kids on the first day of school, decked out with new backpacks and their finest new clothes - not that you could tell when they were pre-distressed from the factory. I was mocked the year that I made them all turn around so I could get a photo of the backpacks on their backs - all character backpacks. They were 10, 8, and 6. Middle school started for the oldest the next year - character backpacks were definitely out! There was never a year before or after that last year of innocence that I could have done that, no matter how strange it may have seemed at the time. It was a snapshot of them then. They had chosen those backpacks and it had been important. Would they remember if I asked them about that time? Unlikely.
Tonight's goodbye was so hasty there was no time for tears. My daughter's boyfriend had come from his California school to say his farewell and they had skipped to Washington DC to have a private au revoir over the weekend.
A last minute doctor's appointment took up the early part of the day and the afternoon was spent in banking and other details. Time was running tight and I called my husband to come home early from work to be sure to say goodbye. She is somewhere over the Atlantic now and there was just not enough time....
As it worked out, her boyfriend was going back to California, same terminal. She argued that we didn't all need to go to the airport so we let them be dropped off by his parents since his departure was two hours earlier. The flight was delayed and last I heard he was at her side as she was ready to board. I'll be watching the news for the unlikely catastrophe that I envision, then waiting for the, "I am here" correspondence at her new, temporary, family home. We'll wait while she searches for a converter for her laptop and buys a new phone. Then we will know she is OK.
Three years ago I took the first first-day-of-school photo without her and this September it will be without her brother too. They'll be one child with an indistinct backpack but the same distressed jeans, brand new, in the photo this year. Where have these years gone, and why so fast? There were times when I looked at them and said, "Stop growing!" I really meant stop growing up, but they didn't and here we are. Waiting. We're used to that by now. This has to be the longest and most distant wait of all. So far....
It's been three days since I started this post and we still wait. No air or other catastrophes noted but I'd like to know about the family she now shares a home with. I know we will hear as soon as she is reasonably able to contact us. This is going to be a great adventure for her, an opportunity for growth far beyond the college experience she has had just seven minutes up the road from our home, in her words. She is going to grow up, come back changed, and embrace the adult world. I know it. She was already there but this is going to seal the deal. Change is good. Letting go is good. We'll never again have the hold on her we had, or thought we had. She is like a cat who resists herding - some of you may recognize that reference.
For the rest of you, I assure you she is exceptional, and now she will be completely unsurpassed, in whatever way is important to her.
I expect that contact any time now; I need to wait for her. It's just not as easy as I thought it would be.
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It is so hard when they go! Sara looks just like you.