It happened just now
Maybe not for the first time, but it felt like it.
I saw across time.
I peeked into a moment that has yet to happen.
I glanced at the future that had become now.
She found a friend, and forgot about me quickly.
She walked off without a word.
And I wanted that embrace. But I didn’t ask for it.
I stepped back to let her find her way.
I watched as I began to walk away while she chatted away. She didn’t need me.
It was a drop of sadness in a bucket of pride and an ocean of love.
That’s when it happened.
As if the movement began from her thick, dark, hair as her head flung around.
She turned to me and paused ever so briefly and looked me in the eye.
It was that moment that I knew would come sooner than expected, become now.
That moment when she is off
Off to college
Off to follow her passions
Off to follow her will
Off to make her life, her family, her way.
Again it was a drop of sadness in a bucket of pride and an ocean of love, but this time it washed over me. Poured over my head, soaking every hair, every skin cell, into my blood and veins and dissolving me into the white foam at the crest of a massive wave.
She is 5
She is 13
She is 18
She is 21
She is 26
She is 32
She is 39
She is saying goodbye, over and over and over.
And I am soaked
I am drenched
I am filled.
She looked me in the eye, told her friend to wait, and ran to me.
She ran with a smile as wide as an ancient cypress, her wild hair flowing and bouncing
She sought that embrace that I so wanted.
As I held her I told her I’d see her after school
And she ran off to Kindergarten.
It’s September 19th, 7:55 AM, the sun is bright and my cheeks are shiny and damp.
