The Days of Slow Motion
My child is leaving for school. For the 13th time, my child is sharpening her pencils and this time she is also assembling pillows and curtains and baskets and everything she will take to her new home, one half of a dorm room we are told has three windows, and she is happy like when she first started school and like she has always been. To make sure the colors will match she has put together a vignette in the living room like they do in IKEA: ‘this could be your dorm room!’ She is ironing her hair ribbons (yes) and mulling over her colorful new Japanese pens, and I am wondering how it will be when her voice is heard more in another galaxy than in our house. And the days before drop-off are taking on a kind of slow motion quality where I notice everything:
she is looking up from her book on the beach! the wind is blowing her hair! look! she is strolling across the room to pick up a pencil! How did she become so tall? I have known her longer than anyone in the world and it is wonderful.
girlwalksin.wordpress.com 
How beautiful a mother’s love for her daughter.
Love and hugs and wishes of bravery for you both.
Bailey will be at preschool for longer hours (eating lunch there!) starting Wednesday, so I’m getting a small taste of this too.
xoxo
Congratulations! Best of luck to Livia!
So glad to see a new post from you, Michelle. It’s been a long time — which means I might well have missed seeing some posts; I often don’t manage to get through the day’s e-mails before a new day’s wave of messages rolls in.
I’m happy for your present so-special moments with your daughter, with her bustling about and you noticing so much. My son Brian and I went through a big transition this year which also involved departure — his mom’s illness and death in the spring — and which shifted our sense of time and our intensity and detail of awareness of Sunny, and of our relationships with her and each other. I don’t know if you saw my Facebook posts about that from Taiwan.
Having lived here in Boulder since late 2011 and therefore having been separated from Brian while he finished high school in Taipei, I’ve been in something of a reverse to the situation in which you now find yourself. Brian moved here last August to start college, and ever since, I’ve been able to watch him daily and enjoy deeply his company. So many particulars of his day-to-day living that I haven’t been able to see but now witness and celebrate. And such a great amount of parenting that I can and very much want to do, helping him as he explores and adjusts to this new culture, and as he grows into adulthood.
There’ll be a time when Brian moves out and heads off to the next chapters in his life. For now, I’m blessed by his presence, and by my presence in his life.