I am finally at that peace in my life where I can reflect on time that has passed, things that no longer matter, and all the parts that have got away.
My girls are now 15 and 11. We're living in a new space, desert landscapes, painted skies, warm breezes that carry bats chirping as they locate their next meals suspended in a forever sky. We lay our heads back in our Adirondack chairs on the back porch and lament on how it came to be that we live in this space. My youngest bounces on the trampolines, springs squawking on each rebound, her giant lady feet putting the webbing through its paces.
I booked us a getaway with our Bear, hes a mountain man, loves to fish and build fires, solo camp in a hammock in the mountains in January. We're going to Big Bend National Park for Christmas, which I get is a little unorthodox. But we're hardly traditional, so I don't get what all the fuss is about. We will get to camp at the base of the Chisos mountain range and try to keep our food away from the black bear and mountain lion that naturally occur in the area.
My girls both do not want to go. I am hurt by this. I know it is natural in their state of being that they become this way, that their friends are way more important than we are, that they need to push us away to make space in their lives for the women that they are to become. But I hang on the threads of memories when my own mother was so energetic, so alive, and so passionate. I want them to remember me too at this time in my life, when everything feels right.
I feel awakened by so many hard lessons, a life of hard living, a finishing school of hard knocks. That I want to live today, with my girls and our Bear, and be free on top of a mountain in the Chihuahuan desert, to be severed from humanity by lack of wifi and cell signal, so that we're forced to look into each others' eyes and see each other for exactly what we are.
We're family. And we made it this far.
My daughters' folly is that they think of nothing but themselves. They are Freud's Id personified, they seek only their own pleasure, they think of themselves first, then of others. And I think about myself at that age, I was exactly the same. I honestly feel like I was 24 and a mother myself before I had any empathy or true compassion for what my mom sacrificed to make my life what it was. I think they will get there in time. I just pray that they get to have us and we get to be with them longer than I had with my mom. I was not ready to see her go.
