missing home

I wanted to put up the story mom wrote after I left Des Moines. I always read it any time that I am home sick. I love it! I was hoping to add it as a link but I can't figure out how to do it so it is going up now as a blog....

This Bird Has Flown

Beth Jorgensen
Assistant Professor of English
Simpson College
Indianola, Iowa

Today I gave my daughter to the world. She was given to me twenty-three years ago, quite by accident, and I knew by the speed with which she pushed into this world that this day would come sooner than later. I knew, as I waited for her to take her first reluctant breath, that she would be deliberate and decisive, even stubborn. But that she would melt for ice cream. For it was ice cream her papa promised if she would just open her eyes and turn pink. The way to her heart has always been ice cream and boys have lined up to take her for a dish.
Eva has always run in the opposite direction. Her favorite words are “Let’s go!”—most often directed at her brother, who doesn’t have his shoe tied yet. As an infant, she would push herself from my lap with her feet, bending backward over my knees until her head rested on my shoes. Then she would slide off and scoot away as fast as her knees and elbows could carry her. She leads feet first, the ultimate optimist who, after a few tears, races for the terminal.
She cannot imagine being unloved and unwelcomed, so love spills from her into the lives of those who have not yet known her. She watches always for a new smile, an invitation. Her arms are open and her hands capable.
Ours is a home of dark-elf magic; poets, musicians, artists lurk in every corner. Eva is the light-elf whose magic turns the campstove out of the wind while her tribe remarks on the haunting movement of the trees. She pilots her older brothers in a straight line as their eyes wander across the vista, her paddle steady as her thoughts. She smells like a girl, powdery and pink, even after a week in the muck. She remembers to bring safety pins.
She is arched eyebrows and open mouth, flashing teeth and a quick laugh. Always in motion, hands waving, bouncing in her seat, pulling toward some destination, pulling others toward her.
Twenty-three years ago, she handed me three tasks: to make her strong, to push her out of the nest; to leave the door open and the porchlight on.
Strong she is. Strong enough to bathe and dress a disabled child nearly her size. Strong enough to give her shoulder to the bereaved mother when they bury that child. Strong enough to grow her own food. To find her way through the wilderness, whether sylvan or concrete.
The day she got her driver’s license, she found a used car, had it inspected, arranged a loan, and drove it home. She didn’t even ask for a signature. She worked nights and weekends between cheerleading, chorus, piano recitals and studies to pay every dime. But she still can’t drive a clutch. Not for lack of asking, to my dismay.
She is strong enough to kiss goodbye the man she has loved for four years, giving herself to people she has never met so that children halfway around the world can learn to read and count. I see Nick look at her with wonder and worship, strong enough to see her go. Again. Once I asked him how it feels to watch her leave. His eyes grew moist. He paused to look at his feet. “She’s Eva,” he looked up with a soft smile. “She gets on airplanes. It’s what she does.” She gives all of herself to bigger and bigger things as if no one person can need her enough.
When I told her oldest brother, Aaron, how Nick adores Eva so, he murmured, “I would, too.” Then I knew how hard it would be for any woman to measure up to his sister’s boundless spirit.
As a girl, I too dreamed of the Peace Corps; a dream, among others, sidetracked by young motherhood. No regrets. But sometimes I admonish myself to be careful what you teach your children, for they might listen. They might prove braver than you. They might make you proud. Still, her grandmother may never forgive me for passing on my dream.
Eva says she jumps into things without thinking, even as she meticulously plans every detail. Over the last week I watched her reduce her life to eighty pounds; a backpack, a suitcase, a carry-on. Eighty pounds for a girl whose blue jeans alone once filled two drawers, a girl who refitted her butt from the clearance rack every time she gained or lost a pound or two. I watched her box or give away five years of young adulthood, a life to which she will never return. A part of me wishes she had not left her lotion, for I will be tempted to pop it open just to smell her. She left a small pile of laundry on the bedroom floor. The cat is already sleeping on it. Her bed is still turned down. The impression of her head is on the pillow.
Once, when she was seven, Jorgen, her nine-year old brother, raced into the house shouting, “Mom! Eva got hit by a car!” I flew to the front of the house, bloodless. Eva lay still as stone before jumping up with devilish laughter. I was tempted to knock her prone again, but all I could do was wrap my trembling arms about her and weep. Was this the moment in which she first came face to face with cruelty?
A few years earlier, the door latch on my old rustbucket had given way. Somehow, Eva’s seatbelt wasn’t fastened tightly and she tumbled into the street. All I could sense were my own screeching tires. A few bumps, a scraped head, no more, but whenever I think of that moment, guilt and fear knot my throat and I want to buckle her in with the door wired shut.
Today I gave her one last push from the nest. We took her to the airport in the first real snowfall of the year, on the first day of spring. When we returned home, we settled into the breakfast nook to drink tea and take in the view of our city skyline at dawn, downtown and the golden dome of the capitol like miniatures in a snow globe. Flakes fell soft and heavy as birds gathered in the urban wilderness that is our garden; a place we built and fruitfully neglected together. Jorgen brought forth a stack of CDs and we spent the next few hours sighing over Miles Davis. As we talked of birds, we knew we meant Eva.
Eight thousand miles away, a Filipino family waits to welcome her. She will be theirs for two years. But she will never entirely be mine again. I wish I had hugged her for thirty seconds longer at the airport.

The door is open and the porchlight on.