Traveling mercies

My sweet girl is bustling around, cleaning up her room, scrubbing the bathtub, doing last minute laundry. She's getting ready to leave for her big adventure. It's snowing outside. I am concentrating on breathing.

One of my nieces arrives tonight to spend her college spring break with us, so she'll be staying in my daughter's room. They won't see each other as my girl will arrive home on the day after her cousin returns to school. A few days after that will be our daughter's 23rd birthday even though I still see her as that little girl with the butterfly painted on her darling face.

My daughter's boyfriend gave her all sorts of "stay safe" precautions, as did his family. "Unless your father has a skill set we don't know about," his mother said, "bear in mind the movie Taken." But why do we worry so? I think it is movies and TV shows not to mention the nightly news that sell us the idea that the world is so dangerous. In fact, the vast majority of the world is benevolent, and my daughter's spirit is so kind and loving I choose to believe that she will attract only those energies to her.

She is meeting one of her lifelong friends in China, the inimitable Gabby, who is attending grad school in Shanghai, and together they will travel to Thailand. I am so happy for them, so gratified by their friendship, which began in second grade. Oh, to be young and footloose and called by the big wide world. My two have always been adventurers. They and their cousin traveled all over with their grandma at a very young age, my mother in her wheelchair, the three little ones around her like happy chicks, and they haven't stopped looking outward since.