Circle Back - the nest begins to empty dad! are you comparing us as birds!!!!

Tomorrow at this time, I'll be in Western New York State, with my oldest daughter, our firstborn - approaching Houghton College.  www.houghton.edu  It's a bittersweet time as she leaves.  Today is her last day at home.  And I know that she'll be home at Thanksgiving and Christmas, but still I'm getting tear-y as I write this.  The time was too short with her.

Yes, I remember what it was like to lose our first pregnancy - and Paula getting pregnant within a few months - and along came Sarah.  I love that first little one who I never held (who, beating heart and fingerprints and dreams and all, is waiting to be embraced by us in heaven); but I can't imagine life without Sarah who would not have been here had we not had to experience the first pain.  We waited longer to tell people that Paula was pregnant, fearful that we would lose the second baby.  So glad she survived!

When we went to the movies - the Rocketeer - there was a place that got loud, airplanes and all that - and Sarah spun around and kicked in the womb.  Paula put my hand where I could feel Sarah saying, "Stop all that noise!"  Then, later, Sarah arrived.  I got one day off from my route salesman job at Frito-Lay and was there for her birth.  Her little baby picture taken just after the birth has her fists clenched as if she just went a dozen rounds with Muhammad Ali.

Sarah is our most (our only obviously) Hispanic-looking kid.  Regarding appearance, the Cuban genes from Paula's side won out over the Scandinavian ones on my side of the equation.  I thought all of my kids would look Hispanic.  They didn't.

One of my saddest memories is making the rounds again:  three-year-old Sarah and I were sitting on the steps of our porch.  We watched the school bus stop at the house next door and she said, "Daddy, someday I'm going to ride that school bus."  And I thought, "Oh, no, you aren't!  Not if I can help it!  You're going to stay right here at three years old and never leave."  But she got on the bus, eventually.  Now she's getting on the bus again.

My greatest sadness might be for our younger two children, David and Lily, 10 and 8 years old.  She was a constant for half of their childhood - and they will always be able to say they had a terrific big sister who spent time with them.  I watched with admiration as Sarah went out of her way to enjoy them and to allow them to get to know her.  Last night, all four kids stayed up late.  Paula and I were in bed at the usual time, but didn't enforce bedtime hours for the little ones.  How it made me cry to hear that laughter drift upstairs at midnight.

What's ahead?  Great things for Sarah, I think.  She has her mom's personality (mostly) with my interests (mostly).  She's in the honors program at her college and gets to spend some time in the Spring in the Balkans.  All those places that will be so great to study about and visit - Bosnia, Montenegro, Kosovo, etc.  She recently told me about pulling Solzenitzen off the shelf in our house and trying to read it when she was little....  An attraction to history and Eastern Europe and politics and art.  State Department?  Missionary?  God, who knows her better and loves her even more than I do, knows what is in her future.

For me - it's just an ache in my heart and yet joy in knowing that she's taking her goodness to a good place, and she'll work hard to apply her gift mix to do what she was born to do.