One More Day
Dear Jana,
I read your post and I can’t help thinking of my own daughter, Jessy Lee, ready to take a leap of her own. Her move though, is towards high school, grade 9.
Last Saturday, Jess and I were in the city hanging out between soccer games. We were at a clothing store picking up a few things for the new term. I was waiting for her to emerge from the change room. I knew things were going well because I could hear her giggling through the door.
Out she came wearing a t-shirt with the words: I ♥ Quebec. She’s only 14, but she has her sights set on McGill University. To her, that $7.50 T-shirt was the most exciting item imaginable. Later that night grinning ear to ear, she wore all its imaginableness to play laser quest.
Years ago I reflected on moments that I’d never desire to change. Today, every moment with her it’s own beauty.
One moment Jessy Lee was six and a half and we spent the whole-of-a-day at the beach. It was hot, very hot. We swam, sang songs, built a sand castle, giggled, read, and ate PB & J and carrots for supper. When the sun started to set, I took her hand and she was warm.
When I started my teaching degree she was in grade one, both of us full time students. I was a single parent and often felt the social stigma fostered by my long hours and time away from Jess.
Today she is independent and spectacular and fiercely resilient, my girl playing provincial soccer in the middle of summer holidays, dreaming of University while trying on clothes for high school, one fabulous pink-shirt-wearing kid!
So, off she’ll leap and I can’t help but feel, there are only 48 full months remaining…
“Sure,” she says. “There’ll be weekends, mom, and summers. And don’t forget our two-month long end-of-12 trek!”
But I can’t help feeling and I can’t help remembering. Oh, and too, excitedly, thankfully, beautifully, I can’t help dreaming right along with her…
My, what life we play, linking
hands through time, in our
brown eyed way.
And yet all the while knowing a cheek-chilled clench,
wrinkled brow, that grip of pause. Yet every day in your lovely way, you
remind me gently of how fine life feels, of this space of awe, of a whole new way, remind me of
me and you, and this life we play. So all that past we’ll just let stay. Yet oh,
oh, my brown eyed Jay.
See of all life’s play, the best is the magic in the wonder of
one more day.
And our hands stay tight, stay in time, we play to today, knowing
holding home life-linked this brown eyed way.
