me and julio down by the schoolyard

My beautiful wild child has been gone this week. I snapped this picture with my cell phone before she left, but the graininess doesn't betray her majesty and the blur only contributes to the whole. This child, her unruly hair and darkly amber eyes has been missing from our home.

We reveled in our freedom, noisemaking at midnight, beers on the porch and dishes in the sink. A quiet week filled with more conversation than usual, the conversing of adults with no particular thing to do. A forgotten art we had once mastered. A reckoning of sorts. How easy it can be to slip into your nonmotherly ways even after turning it all over to the gods once earlier peace had been made.

But we miss her now, with her screeching demands and food on the floor. Her waking us up early and throwing tantrums in the kitchen. We've called every day, her girl child sometimes tolerating the interruption and others I would hear not now, my ears are busy. And I was glad for your lack of missing because your joy is my joy.

Come home to your mother, sweet child. Let me gather you in my arms and feel your legs around my waist. Let me ooh and aah about your beauty and inhale your sweet smell. I will kiss you all over and hold on tight. Sit and share your week of travels, the big doggies and the pool, the zoo and the apples and I will ooh and aah at your discoveries and run my fingers through your hair.