PrayingWithMyFingers

Dear God,

Office appointments start this morning at 8am.  Early morning reflection takes a hit when the Senator has summertime office hours.  (Can’t wait to see how I will manage GMG when the Session is running my life!  Maybe Good Evening, God?).

This evening, I pick up April from Tampa Airport and she returns to being the full-time caretaker of the amazing Lincoln and Reagan and the bun buns as well.  Yes, I have whined a lot about my temporary responsibilities as zookeeper but, I have to admit, I will miss them.  You could say I will be “Crapless in Sarasota.”  I dread, really dread, that moment when they are all tucked in April’s little Saturn and are backing out the driveway, pulling away from the house.  April and the tiny faces pressed against the windows — pulling away from me.  It always causes a lump in my throat and there’s a huge tug on my heartstrings and, I can’t always keep the tears from pooling in my eyes.  Actually, as You can see, the tears are pooling just writing about it.

Moments like this remind me of a line from one of my favorite movies, “Out of Africa.”  It is during one of the scenes where Denis Finch-Hutton is saying good-bye to Karen Blixen.  He was always going off on those manly escapades and Karen didn’t like it one little bit (me neither!).  Anyway, she was resisting the good-bye and said, “I’m better at hello.”  Me too.  Much, much better at hellos.

The year April went off to college (August 2001), I suffered from the “empty-nest syndrome” probably longer and more painfully than the average person.  You see, I had built my whole life around April and caring for April and providing for April and making sure April had as much of everything and every opportunity that I could give her.  To the detriment of me, said my therapist.  (I disagreed.)

It was that same year in October that the man in my life died of lung cancer.  The following year, my mother died.  I felt like life was becoming one big goodbye.  Then menopause arrived with the same theme.  Goodbye.  Goodbye to certain parts of me and my life.  I think it was George Elliott who said in every parting there is an image of death.  Goodbyes really suck!

But, God, I hear You!  Without goodbyes we couldn’t know the joy of hello.  April’s comings and goings have certainly taught me that.  And, I have learned that it’s not goodbye at all.  More like, “see you later.”  We’ve simply rearranged the furniture.  She lives apart from me but never apart.  Relationships don’t end because someone left the room or the world or moved to California.  I can’t wait to say hello again.  I’m better at hello.

“You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you.”   Frederick Buechner