It’s a time of reflection, Phoebe, as I watch you beating your wings so hard, taking off. You’re strong enough to fly over the ocean to the Canary Islands, all by yourself.
I think about how we got here and all that has happened, all that will happen and then the tears come again. And the rosinweed blossoms nod, knowing.
Happy birthday, my beautiful bird. The endless waiting to begin your real, true life is almost over. It's flying toward us even now.
One minute, it seems, I’m watching you clomping your way down the back stairs in pink heels, Mardi Gras beads, and nothing else, announcing, “I yam a pancess!” and the next you and I are talking in a nervous, excited yet tentative way about what actually constitutes a wedding ceremony. Pomp and circumstance, ceremony and ritual. It’s your birthday, my sweet beautiful girl; you’re an ocean away, and I’m feeling verklempt.
The other day I found a box full of old photos that never made it to the digital realm. Some real doozies in there. Here, when you were still small enough to fit in a backpack, and I was half the woman I am now, and we’d go adventuring through the woods.
The autumn of this year, we were coming down into the Chute when we put up a ruffed grouse practically from underfoot. GROUSE! I exclaimed, then turned around to see your one-tooth grin, your wet chin, and I heard one of your very first words: “Gowse!
More adventures, this one at The Wilds, an endangered species breeding facility near Caldwell, Ohio. It was a cold but sunny winter day when Daddy trained the old Kowa scope on a tall metal pole barn far, far away, and a reticulated giraffe stuck its head out of the door. We put you on the eyepiece without saying a word and asked you what you could see. “Gaff!!” you exclaimed. Here's the moment you saw your first live Gaff.
Yep, mai, I saw it. It was a gaff. Now Daddy lookin at it.
Summer in Granny’s backyard, playing with a sprinkler.
Studio fun time, painting your belly bread when Mai wasn't looking.
And now look at you, and look at sweet Oscar; you’re like staring at twin suns. One hardly knows where to focus, you’re both so beautiful and alive and in love.
He, barely able to hold the food he’s grown on the small patch of earth high on a terrace above his Canarian home; that boy’s got mangoes and passionfruit, potatoes, tomatoes, squash, eggs and papayas by the armload. There’s nothing he can’t grow, nothing he can’t do. And I'm still trying to figure out what that feather is he's wearing. Sparrowhawk?
He’s bought a car and learned to drive it; he’s learned English; he’s ready for the big leap, and still we all wait for the US Embassy to catch up and grant him permission to come over. It will happen. And you both have been more than patient, as they took a year to even touch your application. You've made the best of it, seeing each other whenever you can, filling those too-short times with memories for the ages. Oscar is your rock.
And now we're talking weddings. Sometimes I'm grateful for the slowdown. It's all happening so fast, at least for this one who lives like a box turtle, tucked away in an Ohio meadow.
I walk among the wildflowers, thinking about which week in the summer would be best for a wedding of two people I love so much. This one. No, this one. Wait. Mid-August is so special. But mid-July...I just don't know. Could we bottle this July, please, and uncork it in a couple of years?
I walk toward home and tears begin to fall, thinking about it, the enormity and the beauty of it, the big
and the very, very small of it.
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