I know it is expected of me to write about the arrival of the California Dream.  I don’t think I can do that here.  I will break down in tears like I did the day she arrived.  She was taking her sweet time and it pushed me over the edge to a spell in the hospital chapel crying and praying.  Except now the tears would be bittersweet.  Not knowing when I will touch her again is something I refuse to think about.

Our son’s grandmothers had the same dilemma.  Our son was four weeks old when we left for California.  And we definitely didn’t know when we would see each other again.  Contact was a 15 minute long-distance phone call on Sunday afternoon and “snail mail”.  I still have the piles of letters my mother and I exchanged.

Things are different for our situation now.  Nevertheless, the need to catch a plane to get to her causes my heart to ache.

I am still fatigued from the trip. The all-day travel to then from California. The comfortable yet strange bed.  The time difference.  The anticipation. The anxiety. The excitement. The anguish.

I take photos of the foothills behind her house. In between my turn to hold her, I would go out and look at the hills again. The ever changing light makes them look different constantly.  They are like my lake with their continual cycle of lights and shadows playing across them.  I will try to go back to the lake tomorrow.  Time to start walking again. And I need to tell the ghosts who linger there in my memory about the little one I am loving for them and for me.