When Jillian moved to the East Coast and took her four-month-old baby with her, I was on the flight to help with the baby.
Her husband had left a week earlier, had driven a u-haul truck with his friend. JIllian had originally thought she would make the drive, but I easily talked her into staying with us and joining him a few days later..
Fortunately, she had loving in-laws waiting for her who'd rearranged their home to accommodate their son and his little family until they'd found a home of their own. I was invited to stay as long as I wanted. They knew the loss we were feeling.
I had resolved to be strong for her. She was excited for her new life, but understood the change and loss too.
I only cried in the shower.
I only told her about it a year later.
She promised to FaceTime all the time, and she diligently insisted we visit.
She does and we do.
She vowed her little guy would know us just as well as if he lived an hour away.
I was joyfully and painfully aware that having a daughter who married a man from South Carolina, and who'd always meant to return to South Carolina, was a lot different than if we'd lived a hundred years earlier. We would have been limited to letters, would have had to laboriously travel by train. If it had been two hundred years earlier and she'd moved across the sea, we more than likely would have never seen her again. Imagine what that parting would have been like.
No wonder it was more important to bare sons. From the day a daughter was born, the parents knew she'd be leaving.
Last night, her sister picked up Jillian and her family from the airport. I watched on the mobile phone ap Find my Friend as they got closer. When they were within fifteen minutes, I put on my coat and hat to pick at the ice in the driveway. When they pulled in, I only noticed one little person.
I popped open his door. He saw me and said "Oh," as if he recognized all the things his parents had promised had come true. He reached out his arms, rolled out of his car seat and into my arms.
He knew me well.
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