Gentle Words

“Oh, I don’t think we can go on this way,” she said as she turned from me, starting away.

“Which way?” I demanded, so softly, so proud. There was nothing I could say that wouldn’t be loud.

“Honk,” the geese honked, and they squawked and they played in the water–they honked to me, standing unmade. I bent and I picked up a small, colored rock, and I skipped it along the shore, into the flock.

On she went, farther away from me still, as she had for the last several months past until she had now, I suppose, had enough of my face, of my voice by her side and my life in her space.

With the sun down now twilight was coming on soon, so I hurried on after her into the gloom of the trees on the hillside which climbed from the shore, and I called to her, “Wait!” but she waited no more.

At the top I just saw her climb onto her bike. With her helmet on, jacket zipped, mounted catlike, she had started the Harley and tickled the throttle before I could reach her and beg her to stop. Then a backhanded wave as she rode off in style, though I’m sure I saw briefly a little sad smile–

And that’s all that I know of my Susy McGee, who outgrew her father at age 17. Just a wave and a smile it had been back then too, as she boarded the bus to her college debut. Now I sat where I stood, in the damp unkempt grass, and I looked at the road as through old, wavy glass.

I knew little of where she had been for six years, when she showed up one evening, her cheeks stained with tears. Now the summer has passed and I know little more, though perhaps now she went with her spirit restored. And maybe she’ll write, but most likely she won’t, and I’ll wonder and pray that life’s tragedies don’t cloud her judgment and keep her from spreading life’s joy, for to live is to rise above all that destroy.

It is time to let go in the night as before, while my little one seeks her own future once more. On the scorecard of parenthood all is obscured; both the past and the future remain unassured. And yet still, in the dark, I can see my porch light, leading home for a family lost in the night, and I know that she knows, when all hopes have an end, there’s a father who loves her, forever. Amen.