California, There They Go

At the park a couple weeks back, I watched Mia break into a smile as she broke into an aimless run with Jane and I couldn’t help weeping. It had been a bleary kind of week, with the tough Mother’s Day and missed sleep, so I’d been consciously trying real hard to pull the nose up.

But that was the last day we would see Jane. Her family is moving to California. I’m sad for myself – Jane’s mom Kristen, she of the merry and continuous laugh and the good advice and the implacable good will, has been a great friend. She was one of the first friends I made when we moved here. But it was the world we imagined for our daughters together that makes me cry. We talked of Jane and Mia playing together on our high school basketball team. They have seen each other almost every week for the past three years.

At the end of playtime we walked Jane and her mom and her two little brothers to their van, hugged with promises of keeping in touch.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” said Mia so we waved and walked toward the park district building. On the steps, I told the girls to wait, so we could wave as Jane and Kristen and the boys pulled away. Their van pulled out and drove by. We called “Bye!” and Mia ran a few steps towards them, waving one last time.

Kristen called, “Bye, Mia!” out the open window. Mia laughed and ran back towards me, smiling. California means nothing to her. When I told her, “Jane and Thomas and Linus are moving to California. Jane’s going to be a Cali-girl!” I might have well have said, “Jane’s going to time travel to the 18th century!”

(Last week, in the cement cave of a Chicago underground parking lot, I asked Nora where we were and she replied, “Mexico!”)

It was Mia’s smile as she turned away from their departing car and ran back to me that got me. That is truly living in the moment. She is not anticipating the missing, the empty feeling. She doesn’t even know what loss is. She was just happy right then and there.

A Moment

Mia calls from the other room, “Mommy, can I print?”

“Yes,” I say, asleep on the couch. A few minutes later, she walks into the room. My eyes open at her footsteps. She shows me her picture. A hot air balloon she has colored pink with broad computer strokes that are so un-brushlike, they resemble solid tubes of pink. The balloon’s gondola is colored black in a similar fashion.

“Can I cut this out?”

“Yes, come with me.” I take her to the desk, demonstrate how to hold the pair of scissors, blades closed safely in her fist, while walking. I lay the scissors on the desk. “Now you do it.”

She does fine carrying them to the coffee table. I follow her, return to the couch and watch her work. The few moments of snatched sleep have stilled my head and I can watch her with clarity. Everything else but her, everything in the room, in the house, in the world, falls away.

Mia wields the scissors like a sculpting tool. She slices in wide swaths at the edge of the paper, slowing and refining her cuts as she gets closer to the round balloon shape in the middle of the page. The only sound in the room is the dry scratch of the blade moving through the paper and her intense breathing as she concentrates, holding the paper close to her face.

Peace. Love. Gratitude. The whole deal.