This ‘kids leaving home’ business is all new to me. When they were born everyone said, “Enjoy every minute, it goes by so quickly!” and I did and it did.
Ten weeks ago our eldest girl child and her grandmother took off across the ocean. It was the longest and furtherest flight from the nest any of our chicks have ever made. We were excited for her and grateful for the opportunity but by about week five, the missing was getting rather extreme. Those of us left here in the normal routine of life sighed and longed for her and her other grandmother even said at one point that the missing had turned into a physical pain.
We gathered around the phone to listen to every voice note and we studied every photograph she sent. We, hungrily, lapped up any information about her that others shared. We tried to ignore the fact that her bed stood, unwrinkled, in a room that had once been entirely filled with her presence. The cat meowed mournfully, trying to make sense of her departure, and we all limped along trying to figure out our new positions, wondering what to do with the gaping hole she had left.
A couple of weeks ago, we began to count down the sleeps. We talked about everything that needed to happen before her return: flowers on her desk, new linen for her, her favourite soap in the bathroom and a treat on her bed. Twenty-four hours before the two were due to arrive, the internal hum of anticipation set my nerves on edge and I hit this house like a hurricane crashing through the land. Suddenly it wasn’t just her bed that was important, but every bed got it’s linen washed and was carefully remade. Every household task that hadn’t been even remotely on my radar suddenly became absolutely necessary. By early evening I was walking with the distinct stiffness of one who has overdone it. I had, quite literally, put my back into it and I scolded myself for behaving as if the queen was coming to stay.
The day of their arrival, I was up before the birds. The baby had woken for a feed as the dark of night was turning all silhouettes and silver morn, and instead of snuggling up again beside the babe with his belly full, I crept through the house, straightening this, wiping that, praying, watching, wondering.
Finally, we arrived at the airport and we were all unstrapping seatbelts and opening car doors before the car was properly parked. We sped walked, eyes peeled, wondering who would be the first to spot them. Up the steps we bounded to see if we could locate them…nobody there. Down we sped, refraining from pushing one another, but really feeling rather desperate. In that moment of wondering where to stand for the best chance of welcoming our loved ones home, we found ourselves hurtling right into them!
Safely home! Oh what joy! Tears, hugs, together at last!
We walked out into the parking lot a lot slower, merry and content. My husband with his arm linked, comfortably, into his mother’s. My eyes fixed on my child as she pushed the trolley load of bags with a confidence she must have found on her travels. She’s flown back for a time, and this is who we had prepared the house for; not exactly royalty but someone far more important:
our very own home-coming queen.
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