how it has been 🌱
thoughts on a baby bird leaving the nest
The thing is, I keep trying to write something, and this month feels so full and weighty and holy and heartbreaking and brimming with love that it is hard to find the words. And it is not my story, or not only my story. The majority of it will be for my daughter, Kenya to tell.
It has rained a lot. Rained and rained and rained. Everything is jungly, green, almost glowing with green.
We said goodbye in a light sprinkle. We had a penguin hug. Prayers. A cancan line to see us off, a newer tradition in this life of goodbyes.
I don’t want it to be over.
In a way, nothing is over, all of it continues. Life for Kenya is ongoing and full of adventure. And also, also. It would be wrong not to acknowledge the moment. We are moving from one thing to another, from four kids under our roof to three, from a daughter at home to only sons. Kenya is the artist. I don’t know whether we’ll ever be able to erase the quick sketch she did of our dog, Wookie, on the kitchen wall tiles.
The margins of all her math workbooks are filled with drawings and doodles.
As I write this, Kenya and I are on a train to Bangkok to catch our flight. Finally I get a breath, a chance to write about the daughter I am letting go, even as I am not yet letting go, I am the lucky one who accompanies her and sends her on her way.
I don’t want it to be over and yet I honor what it has been by letting it go. I open the door to the beauty that will be. The wonderful thing is that I don’t actually know what will happen. And clinging to what was can only rob me of the beauty of our future, something we cannot yet perceive.
I want the world to know how beautiful she is.
I am jealous of the world.
I remember how she would sit with me and pat my arms with her small hands. Her little humming noises as she leaned against my chest, sucking her fingers. The softness in her eyes when she looked at me. I remember the little girl, the big girl, the teenager.
What will happen next? We are in the in between, on the way, in the womb of the world, in the liminal space. The veil flutters. Kenya’s future art whispers to her. I think to myself that I cannot take these everyday sketches for granted anymore. Maybe I need to fill all my margins with sketches, too.
Kenya will be. She will go on and nothing can separate us really, we all go on with this web of light between us, the memories of our lives, the days we keep.
She will be, and I will let go.
I will open my hands, and she will go, like the little weaver bird we saved that one time. Like the weaver bird, sometimes you have to encourage a luminous being to leave you. You have to gather everything inside and say, it’s beautiful out there, you’ve got this, go!
And it is and it will be. And there is so much we don’t yet know but we trust and we love.
I am thankful. I am so, so thankful.
The parting is so much deeper than we think at the time, skating the surface of the sorrow, clutching at the flotsam of life. The pain comes later. You have captured it all so well. Precious times.
This is beautiful. Thank you for sharing your heartfelt journey. I too have a daughter, 19, who is on her way back to the United States from our new home in Costa Rica, to embark on her personal journey of which she has no inkling of where it might lead. This is a heavy, yet proud and appreciative time of letting go, embracing what is to be, and finding so much gratitude for what was. <3