The Slow Letting Go

This weekend I am traveling....

I am traveling alone

for the first time in well over two years

.

It's a really important trip to see one of my dearest friends and I've been 

yearning to take it for quite some time. I knew that I would not be packing up the babe 

for this adventure and as the flight comes closer

I acknowledge another wave goodbye,

another first in the my life as a mother: a night (or two) away

from my boy.

Just writing those words fills the center of my heart with hurt.

Just writing those words lifts the beautiful possibility of my singular (and too frequently ignored)

experience to my eyes like a cup

to someone dying of thirst.

Two years and nearly two months of service.

Over eight hundred nights of doing whatever it takes.

Where I am going my people acknowledge space for rest and processing.

I plan on buying a brand new sketch book tomorrow.

It feels almost giddy: a fresh new sketch book.

I think I am going to buy four magazines at the airport and read them 

lazily on the plane with my iPod pouring loud music right into my brain.

There will be no needs to meet but mine,

no magic face in which to see all the wonders of an eternal morning.

It is both the finest of fantasies and the most aching place.

Orion has been with me on my last seven round trip flights

and so I've been sweaty, nervous and overpacked.

Not this weekend

I can get tipsy. I can let go.

I can plump the too-skinny parts of my head and heart that have

really and honestly forgotten solitude. That have forgotten the art of getting lost in deep

and nourishing conversation without having a secondary stream of thoughts

that constantly fret over voice volume

and eyes that wander over to the baby monitor just to check and see if he's good.

Orion will have Guy Time with his handsome Daddy

and snuggles from Oma.

They'll go on adventures and do things that mama won't allow,

watch lots of videos maybe,

stay up too late.

There'll be plastic easter eggs filled with goodies

and trips to see tiny airplanes

and naps together.

I cannot wait to see him when I come home,

to show him a version of me 

that is at once refreshed and light and grounded

greedy for kisses

thirsty for every single word

he could ever say

.

I cannot wait to gently throw my arms around my girlfriend

and snuggle pups

and have brunch

and catch up

and slip into the rhythm of understanding

that happens among the most kindred of souls.

I know I'll look back at this night's internal dichotomy someday

when I've said a thousand 'goodbye's to Orion

and see the beauty and gentle rawness of it

That I love a boy so much I have begun to forget how to be without him

That I love myself so much and am so loved by my tribe

that room is made for me to be 

alone and not alone

aching some for the babe I am only borrowing

practicing awkwardly at first the expansive motion of

opening my arms

as one releases a kept bird

and

letting him 

find

his

place

in

this 

world

.

xoxo,

Sunny