Goals:

• Learn to type with thumbs.

• Get out of bed without cursing on the regular.

• Finish CHOMP.

• Not embarrass daughter in front of roommate.

• Be in better contact.

• Stop having nightmares about where I will live in college. I am 48.

• Not dwell on fact I am 48.

My girl was set to come home last Friday.

It rained all day.

I was worried.

I was worried, but I put it away, because that is what you are supposed to do. How you are supposed to suddenly be only interested in passing at the comings and goings of your child after decades of details down to lunch vouchers and snot.

‘Cause, really. Let’s be honest.

Parenting is fucking granular.

So, I was already worried when the phone rang.

Her voice was unsteady but steady.

Rattled but recovered.

She hydroplaned in the rain across two, maybe three lanes and a very dippy median. She could’ve flipped the car, collided with oncoming traffic. All manner of terrible, awful, very bad things. Evil, vile-smelling places my mind has gone more than once since it happened.

But this is what happened, instead.

She made the leap, accidentally.

She got her car to a safe place.

She called us.

We went and met her and drove with her home, a three-hour tour.

Between the deer on the way to Destin and this, I feel we are running short on both vehicles and adrenaline.

However, being faced with losing 100% of our family to accidents in two weeks has me on the ropes with you, Fate.

I kinda think I owe ya.

We think we are in charge.

We think we have it.

I see that deer, rolling, rolling, and therefore, by God’s grace, go I.

This summer, my husband and I had a spirited debate as to whether or not our relationship could survive a road trip. Because, you know, the airlines are a mess. We needed to get away after our daughter came home for fall break, before I started crying my eyes out again. I’ve spent most of the autumn crying, I miss her so. We decided to go to Destin.

We’ve never been to Destin.

——————————————————————————

We were four hours deep into the drive after a full day of work when a deer leaped from the trees on the side of the road near West Plains, Missouri. We both saw it. We cursed, and we watched it leap … land … and leap again … straight into the grill of my husband’s new pick-up truck, the one he’d wanted his whole life and didn’t let himself buy until after his 47th birthday. Neither of us had ever hit a deer before.

We hit the deer with the grill of the truck. The deer destroyed the grill and the engine, and I’m fairly certain the truck destroyed the the same in the deer.

This is the worst part: The deer rolled horizontally, like a child down a hill, three times. I can still see that roll, hooves akimbo, the shock of its young and too-short life meeting metal and rubber on the road where it grew up. Nature, red in tooth and claw.

It met my eyes for a moment through the windshield, just as shocked as we were, and hauled itself up, hobbling on three legs into the woods. I didn’t see it after that - I was too fixated on my husband, who was trying to beach the hull of the destroyed Ford Maverick on the shore of the highway.

“Oh, shit. I don’t have a gun.”

That’s the first thing he said. Because we grew up rural, you must understand, and if you hit a deer, you must shoot it so it doesn’t suffer. I’ve often wished this rule of thumb could apply to any living being, including humans. But also, we don’t carry guns. We’ve separated from the places we came from in geography and politics.

The deer is on its own, as are my reproductive rights.

The deer ran off, and we limped the truck to the side of the road and called the police. The officer who arrived couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. He told us about the other folks who had hit a deer recently, and one family who hit a bear. And an elk. You never know, apparently, what will haul its ass out of the Missouri woods these days.

The next morning, we worked the process. One thing at a time. Police report, tow truck, rental car. What can you rent in West Plains, Missouri, on a random Thursday morning? It’s a minivan. A minivan that smells distinctly of cat piss. Yes, friends. And we took it, because beggars cannot be choosers. We took that minivan, and we watched the Maverick get loaded onto a tow truck, and we drove to Destin, where hundreds of poisonous Pink Meanie jellyfish rode the waves like cowgirls and haunted my dreams like a Skeleton Crew short story.

While I sat on that pristine sugar sand beach sipping my drink and staring out at the hundreds of jellyfish cresting the clear waves, I thought how this is the first vacation we’ve taken without my girl in nine years. How alike it felt to the vacations my husband and I took … before. How, now, my life is … after. I thought on how I can make after not separate. How I can find a place for my daughter and I to be both adults but not apart.

I never understood older people who refused to drive after dark. Now that I’ve seen that deer do the triple somersault … now I do.

Do you love?

Lily went back to college this morning. My husband flew off to a conference. And so I find myself here in my backyard, listening to a very similar playlist to when I was last alone, in 1998.

I’ve cried. A lot. I’ve missed my daughter. I’ve missed the weight of her head on my shoulder that in truth hasn’t been there regularly in years.

It might be I’m missing a memory.

Or an identity?

Or an idea.

Because my life now is wonderful. My daughter has grown into a breathtaking young woman, all strength and intelligence and talent. I miss her, but she is not gone from my heart or my life. She is becoming her own reality.

My marriage is strong and something I marvel at daily, having witnessed the many, many tries we have all taken and how few of them have stuck, despite all our best efforts. There is no talent to relationships.

I’m now in another transition, trying to figure out who I am now. I’m the rocket ship, not the launchpad.

What if maybe what I thought was the main part was just the thruster all along?

What if that were true?

Leaving my daughter at college the first time was like being hit solidly in the back by a breaking wave. I knew it was coming, but I didn’t know how or when to dive.

I hugged her goodbye in her room about two hours ago. I always try to let her end the hug first, but this time I couldn’t.

At the midpoint of the hug, it came against my will: the time to dive.

I gave her an extra squeeze. I counted aloud the days until I would hug her again. We turned around and walked out the door.

I dove.

We are driving. I’m typing with my thumbs into a little Squarespace app with tears pouring down my cheeks. It’s mile marker 191 and I just broke the surface of my defenses, gasping for air.

She graduated.

That was what was supposed to happen.

And I’m glad.

She’s amazing, and I want her to launch.

It is good and right that our children launch.

And, also?

Driving away from the dorm registers like grief.

It came from somewhere down deep, and it tore me open, unexpectedly.

I think, in a strange way, it is a good sign.

We had a good time.

I wish we could live both lives - the one where she stays with me and the one where she makes her own way.

Life is not like that. We must choose.

She chose right.

And it hurts.

Yesterday, Lily Jane Arens graduated from high school.

This weekend bloomed without my control.

I saw

a cat in a backpack, silky and sweet

Niblings, some taller now

new strands of silver for dark-haired girls

a row of not- kids striding the pitch

four horses of different colors

patches of sunlight on crimson robes

I heard

shouting voices, snatches of songs

wind whistling through thick leaves

excited whispers

my pulse in my ears

the bark of a stray for my tennis ball

the sound of her car pulling away

I tried to explain. How I’d be literally pirating off the radio. I’d always miss the first few bars as I dove for my boom box, trying to catch as much of The Song as my little thirteen-year-old heart possibly could. This was how we did it in Iowa in the late ‘80s. You had to WORK to express your infatuation.

Tonight, my husband is at soccer and my daughter is in GA at an international DECA contest, and I’m very, very proud, and I’ve also got control of a way better sound system and my Spotify throwbacks.

I just want you to know who I am.

I lit all the candles, girl, even the three-wicks. Screw it, the world nearly ended in 2020. Let your Bath & Body Works coupons expire for once.

Nothing compares to you.

Part of me wants to stay here, alone, just with myself a little longer. I forgot what it’s like to hang out with me after twenty years of marriage and nineteen years of mothering.

Tall grass waves in the wind.

I will need to reinvent myself.

I will need to write a new book.

I will need to be me, again, independent of other people.

I may transition again. I went from maiden to mother. I may now go from mother to crone.

Can we take back “Crone?”

Hello, darkness, my old friend.

I think we can.

Who’s going to ride your wild horses?

Today we had a graduation party for the little angel and her posse from The Emerald City. I had to check the archives from 2006 to make sure I had that right.

I can close my eyes and see them in a McDonald’s playplace at a second birthday party. At a Christmas celebration. At the playground. Dragging sleds up a hill. Giggling at the zoo. Cheering at a Royals game. Christmas. Sledding. Birthday party. Friendsgiving. Barbecue. Zoo. Apple orchard. Halloween. Friendsgiving. Christmas.

Elementary.

Middle school.

High school.

Births.
Deaths.
Marriages.

Divorces.
Cancer.
Jobs won.
Hospital visits.

Cancer.
Jobs lost.

Birthdays.
Friendsgiving.

Christmas.

And suddenly, a beautiful spring day.
Seven young adults.
Seven families.
Eighteen years.

We made each other family, because we had to. Because we had no one else in town. Because we needed someone to call to pick up a kid, to help plan a funeral, to move into a new house.

Today, watching the kids laugh with each other, standing with my dear friends, I wished I could tell new mom Rita about today.

Hey, girl. The kids’ll be alright.