Mother Love

Beautiful Crater Lake, Crater Lake National Park

There have been a few really great things about my daughter living out of state for a couple of years - surprising as it is to hear myself say that. I have loved being able to go for visits a few times each year. There's an intimacy in waking up under the same roof, hanging out in a whole different way than just heading across the bay for lunch and an afternoon. There's all the roads we've been able explore on our many drives between here and there over the past couple of years. And I've gotten to know Boyfriend so much better, and have felt our love for each other deepen and grow, have felt us become family.

This trip was bittersweet. I helped them sort through things, pack boxes, get the house ready for its new owners. Then we packed her car to the roof and set out, just she and I, but with all of our hearts in our hands, waving goodbye, tears running down all of our cheeks, she heading closer to her dream of the writing life, he and sweet Lola (four-legged child) to a new job on a mountaintop, an hour and a half from his home town in Colorado. The plan, to do the long distance thing for the two years that she's in school, then after that, who knows...

I am in awe of them. The way they have processed and worked their way through this. Having the hard discussions, making the heartrending decisions. He honoring her dreams, she honoring his.Taking the risk to follow those dreams, loving each other enough not to hold the other back, trusting that what they have is real enough, strong enough to see them through. And if it isn't, they'll find that out, too, and be better to have found it out.

It's a lesson for me, all this letting go into the unknown following your dream stuff. It's my constant edge. And on a whole different level, to watch my daughter in this process, one of only two people on this earth I would willingly give my life for, setting out on her own for the first time in years, growing her dreams into being alongside the sadness of leaving her home and her family to do it, unloading her car, seeing for the first time her little room in the messy house full of other college students, watching my baby grow up again, my heart breaks in that mother way, and the poignancy of it is just too big for words.

And Crater Lake, well, also too much for words. It was a gorgeous afternoon when we passed through. The light and clouds and mountains just beautiful, and the lake itself stunning, one of those ancient, amazing, indescribable things, like mother love I guess, that cannot really be explained, only felt and experienced and revered.

Posted at The Creative Exchange - thanks so much, Lisa!