She's flown away
08/06/2006 10:24 p.m.

Well. Jessica, my 18 year old graduated senior, is at basic training for the navy as I write this. It's amazing. One minute they are home, safe, children. The next, gone to the Recruiting office where the current Recruiter takes charge of a beautiful child, transporting her to the hotel where she will, the next day, board a flight to the rest of her life. God.

And I, the mother, call her father, and ask him, "Are you worried?" I can hear him shrug, the shrug of a man with an MIA heart, and he answers in a disgusted tone as if answering might make him weak, "Ahhhhhh, I don't know." Idiot. He doesn't even know a diamond when she slices him in two, his daughter, and then marvels at the blood on the floor as if it was not his own.

It is a strange grief, the grief of saying a farewell of sorts to a grown child. It's not like a sadness for what is lost, but more a sadness for what can no longer continue. That passageway, the one of childhood, is closed now, and there's no going back.

I miss her, dreaming last night that she showed up in my bedroom doorway, hair all short and smart as required for her new job, and she just needed a hug. Of course it was me who needed the hug. Ack.

And I pray for her every night, sending her name and the universal intentions for her well being and strength up on the smoke of my smudge bowel and sage. I promised her I would, every night, and so it is.


I am currently Jumbled