Woman with Small Dog Walking

Recently, my family gathered in Florida for a cousin's daughter's wedding.  Both our daughters came, as well as my husband and myself.  It's a side of the family that I feel very close to, and so I was happy to there, surrounded by my favorite aunt and her daughters, my cousins. The hard thing about the wedding was being with my daughters:  not because they were difficult to be with, but because I knew that, at the end of the weekend, they would step on different airplanes and head back to their homes.  Our relationship would once again become electronic; telephone calls, emails, and text messages.

2005 was the year my oldest daughter graduated high school and started college.  The fall of that year my husband and I drove with her to Texas, and then flew back to New Mexico.  I remember thinking to myself, "This isn't so tough, this separation stuff".  A few days later, while doing the dishes, I looked out the kitchen window and realized that my daughter wouldn't be coming in the front door that day, or in fact, anytime soon.  And of course, I cried.  And now, almost ten years later, every time I separate from my daughters, the same thing happens:  I think I'm okay, and then, a day two or three later, I find a deep, quiet sadness in the back of my thoughts and I realize I'm longing to be with those two wonderful people who were present in my life for such a short period of time.