When I was eight years old, I finished grade two while my sister finished grade three. My Mom packed up her car with a little uhaul hitched behind and we drove East to meet up with my Dad and start a life where my parents grew up.
We spent those last few days after school with my Mom taking all our pictures with our friends. My sister and I piled in the back seat of the car and cried. I remember it like it was yesterday. I never thought I would have friends like I left behind.
So it is now for my girls. We are packing up our car and going East to start a life where I grew up. I sat with Davilyn tonight at bedtime, clearly upset about something, I asked her if she had a bad day at school. She said no. But when I asked her what was wrong she launched into a million questions about our move and started to cry. Telling me about all the friends she will miss. How she will miss her “home”, our house. Her stuff. The pumpkin patch. How she will never see her friends again.
And I cried with her. Because some of it is true. There are friends who have touched her life here that she may never see again. She will wonder all her life about those friends. I know I did. I do, to this day. It’s a sad day when you can’t remember their names anymore. I don’t remember my first day at my new school and I can only conclude that it wasn’t nearly as tragic or terrible as I thought it might be. That maybe, I found a friend right away and I settled in and hardly glanced back. My friends and I wrote letters and sent photos… until eventually those letters and photos stopped coming and going. Time marches on and people come in and out of our lives at many different times. I see that now. My girls don’t. They won’t until they are much older. This won’t be the last time that they move. University will call to them. They will go and see their own Wide Open Spaces.
I only hope that when they are done, their journey brings them home again.
