07 September 2016

summer gatherings, final

1988, already steps ahead
The ground not quite there where it should be underneath my feet. But this I know: Soon I will feel it again and eventually I will go upstairs and take the sheets off the bed and fill the washing machine, the last couple of loads of summer gathering laundry.
Maybe not exactly today, there is no rush.

It's been a full summer and she was my shiny diamond throughout. It was a wonderful summer when she was around (and a pretty awful summer when she was not. Next time, I want intend to be considerably more healthy).

I forgot how deep it goes, how physical this feeling is, how heavy my arms and legs become  watching the departing car. Her serious face behind her sunglasses, while I am wiping away tears. Only minutes earlier we were snapping at each other, stop taking pictures of me, (stop being such a mum, stop being such a teenager) and now there she goes again, a car on the motorway to the airport.
In a couple of hours I will check the website that allows me to track their flights over the next two days and by the time they are back home with the cat and the dog, I know that I will have found the ground beneath my feet as well.

She moved out 14 years ago, slowly widening the gap (which now is 18,000 km wide). I know the drill. We usually argue at the last minute. Before we start crying.

Again. I let her go back to her amazing life. And you have no idea how amazing!

If this is true:
I suppose we are all products of our parents' joy and suffering. Their emotions are written into us as much as the inscriptions made by their genes.
(Siri Hustvedt)

Then she got all our joy genes.

Thank you my love for a wonderful summer.










8 comments:

  1. Beautiful in all regards.

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  2. A beautiful post of such deeply heartfelt love.

    Hope you are feeling better everyday. Thinking of you.

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  3. Lovely and arduous at the same time. My breathe still catches somewhere above my heart when I realize the last one just left. My job is essentially finished. A new profession, one as demanding and rewarding, will be hard to find.

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  4. When I was living in New York State and my only child and her family moved to Florida I thought I would die or go insane. I felt very much like Demeter did when Persephone had to go back to Hades for the winter.

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  5. Proof it does not always deepen like a coastal shelf, thank goodness.

    My twin nieces, one in Australia, one in England, always fight before they cry before they part.

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  6. This made me cry with recognition. You express what this feels like to perfection. It is just like this with my daughter, too. She lives with us now, for a hot minute, already planning her exit. How lucky we are, now and always, wherever they go. May our daughters' lives, and my son's too, be wonderful, with joy written in their genes. Hugs, my friend. She will be back, and until then, she is in your heart and arms always.

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  7. Oh, how wonderful. I read this with such old longing, and let it go. Your daughter is fortunate in you as her mother.

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