Mother Airways

"I am so sorry for you. How are you doing?" she says, squinting in the light filtering through the canopy of green leaves shading her driveway. Shuffling with age but appearing as polished as she did when she was my mother-in-law two decades ago. 

It takes a moment for me to understand what she means because the words sound like death. And I'm only there to take a carload of donations from the basement. Items my adult daughter is discarding because she is leaving for Scotland for her master's degree.

I want to say that Conner and his family left a third-floor apartment, and Alexis is leaving a basement. But I don't. I smile and tell her it is sad, but mostly I'm excited. 

She gracefully turns in her own shadow and leads me inside to a house that still feels a little like home even though I don't want it to. 

I was fifteen when I first set foot in that house; thirty when I stepped out. 

As I haul my daughter's belongings into the back of my car, just as we did with her brother a few months ago, I know I have done something right to have raised kids who are brave enough to fly the nest.

Welcome aboard Mother Airways. The airlines refer to passengers as souls. Their job is to safely move us about on our journeys. We have three souls in Alaska. One in Moscow, Idaho. Two under our roof plotting their path into the world. 

And one on her way to Scotland fulfilling a lifelong dream. 

In a half-hour, I will drive her to the airport, and we all cry. But this is the job of a mother. We hold onto them with our hearts, not our hands. 

Thank you for flying with us. Your destination awaits you.