At the oddest times, thoughts of him come back to me.  Tonight, it was the threat of rain with flash floods and mudslides in the burn areas.  I checked the rate of rainfall where I live now (a mere 12 inches a year.)  I thought Kit would find it interesting so I compared it to Dallas (three times what I get).  Then I checked there and the feeling he was near just came. 

Fifty-five inches a year is how much rainfall is average for the town I was born in.  I remember what all that climate brought in abundance; the green grass, the bugs, the snakes, the storms.  I reminisce on the wildness of it all.  My father.  For some reason, I still feel he is there and that I will see him again one day.  Perhaps it is because he died after I moved away that I have this feeling.  He is not gone.  Somewhere in my mind, in my soul, that house still stands.  In it, he still resides.  Quietly, he awaits my homecoming.

So tender still.

I couldn't believe it brought tears to my eyes.

But soon you realized,

I didn't touch it.

I could feel your face fall

when you saw what you had done.

 

I know being a mother can be testy at times.  We all learn things along the way, new "tricks of the trade," per se but I think the hardest one of all is learning to let go.  I usually have no trouble writing but right now I can hardly think straight and my eyes burn from having cried so much today.  All because I let go.

My daughter is visiting her father very far away from me and today she told me that she had been thinking about staying there for the school year.  Her father bribes, I know this, I figured this out the day I left him because he offered to buy me a convertible if I would stay.  I told her to set aside all the bribes and set aside her worry for me and ask herself "Will this be something I think is fun and exciting?" and let that be her answer.  She thinks it will be. 

There are so many reasons causing my hurt, I didn't know which reason I was crying for when I would start again.  I cried because will miss her horribly, we have always been together.  I cried because I know for a fact if she knew I was going to cry like this, she never would have considered staying in Oklahoma.  I cried because she is growing up and wanting to branch out.  I cried because I knew I couldn't offer her the material things/big home she will be getting.  I know that material things aren't all that matter and I cry due to the fact that she knows this too.  I cry now...just because I feel a little bit like a failure.

Is it normal for me to feel this way?  She will go from skirting the poverty level here in California to upper middle class surburban living in Oklahoma. She will go from attending a high school with gangs to a school that has only 500 kids in K through 12 grade.  She won't even have to worry about her car getting totalled by someone running from the cops (yes, this happened to her car).  She can be a cheerleader again (something I could no longer afford here) and they even said with her experience, she could coach her little half-sister's cheerleading team.  How could something that seems like such a good thing for her, hurt me so much?  Am I being selfish?

I thought blogging about this would make me feel better but it isn't and my hands shake enough to make even this tedious.