Coming Home

Dear Daddy,
You come home tomorrow.  When I started writing this, we had a few days to go, and Clio had started counting the days until your return.  Not much to count now.  In fact, you must be traveling already, though the time difference confuses me.  It is tomorrow there already, but you are moving backwards through the time zones and will arrive here 3 hours (and something like 24 hours of travel) after you left there.

Eleri sometimes forgets, still, and thinks you are at work and might join us for dinner.

We have been pulling the house together, not that it got out of control while you've been away, more preparing for the fall and back to school.  I'm trying to get organized.  The kids are decorating the sidewalks with chalk.  The garden is wild: sunflowers halfway to the roof, squash vine halfway to the garage.  The squirrels have dessicated your beautiful delicata squash, I'm sorry to say.  I was about to get out the lawn mower but the grass is wet and rain is coming, so I weeded the raspberry jungle instead.  I'll need your help to get the massive pile of bracnshes into some yard bags.  There were actually some beautiful berries under all that mess, and the girls ate them up, then yelled at me when I ate the last one: I was supposed to save it for you.

Orientation started at school this morning, for both girls as it turns out.  I think they had a good day.  When we got home, my cousin Jesse called and suggested swimming at my mom's.  Tonight as we ate dinner, all chlorinated and sun tired, it felt like summer vacation has a last little stretch to it yet.  Did I tell you already that we tried out the Highland Pool and it is awesome?  That we spent a morning at Nokomis beach, with barely anyone else, and counted the planes and the minnows?  I keep finding that I am holding my breath--that old bad habit--and when I think of my time with my girls in the sand and the sun and this beautiful late summer Minnesota weather that I am remembering, finally, fondly, and with nostalgia, I remember to breathe deep.

While you've been gone, people have said things like "That's a long time to be a single mom."  But we have been very well taken care of, with dinners at Nonny and Papa's and at Rory and Nicole's and that whole weekend at the cabin.  I think this has saved us not so much for the help with meals but for the adult contact it has provided me, re-energizing me so my patience will stretch.  And it has needed to be supple: the girls are at each other quite a lot.  But then they hug, and Eleri announces "I LOVE you Clio," in this very sweet cadence, and all is fine for the moment.  They had some much-needed separation Saturday when I took Clio to Silo's birthday party (making his card she was delighted to discover that their names share three of four letters) and Eleri happily spent the day with Rory and Nicole, then we all had dinner there, with Erin and Kyle and River and Autumn, too.  River and Clio made a couch fort.  Eleri did the same puzzle over and over.

There are puzzle stations all over the house.  One in front of the fireplace, one in the office, one in front of the island in the kitchen, and tonight Eleri made those two-piece reading puzzles (Bear and Cub; Goat and Kid) in a long line across the office doorway.  She is doing a puzzle every time I turn around, and won't leave the house until she finishes.  True story.  It is still sort of cute and endearing, but if it lasts I think it will get old, fast.

We went through the girls' toys and books and brought a big bag of each to Oliver and have more to donate. We cleaned out the art supplies and turned over their closets.  We empty the de-humidifier regularly, and each time the girls want to come downstairs with me, but of course then they don't want to come back up.

Do you find it hard to believe we have been here over a year now?  I think about what we have done--and not done--in this time.  How I like our life here and what I would like to improve.  I wonder most as you head home if you feel like you are coming home, and if you do, if that home is about people--your girls--or if it is coming to be about this place, too.  I hope so.  I know time away can amplify the things you leave behind, and I hope you like some of the things you see.

See you tomorrow,

Heather