The day was special. Up at 5:30 a.m., from sheer excitement, we had our morning tea, crept back under the covers to talk, precious last moments. The telephone rang out. It was her sister calling one last time from San Antonio. She got up then and telephoned her father in Lubbock. “I love you.” Last night she had a long telephone goodbye to her sister in Florida. Then a favorite aunt. Her big brother came by for one last hug. I couldn’t help but remember all the years he refused to hug anybody in the family during his awkward youth.
Suitcases were now the focal point. “I just don’t have room for these shoes.”
“But you’ll need that winter coat.”
“Well, I will just have to buy one there. I don’t want to carry it. This old coat will be both raincoat and winter coat, Mom.”
“I have to take my tennis racquet.”
Out came the measuring tape, to measure the bags; a total of 107 inches, no more. Weight? I think it’s seventy pounds. Is that per bag or total? Only one carry on.
“Dear, it is so heavy. You can’t carry it on!”
“I want to get to the airport early…international flight. What if I have to re-pack? What if it’s too heavy? The bathroom scales are not that accurate, you know.”
“Can you mail me those extra sweaters and jeans if I need them? I can’t buy jeans over there.”
“Here’s a book on Texas I bought. Your friends will want to see what it’s like in Texas. Squeeze it in.”
“You’re carrying that shopping bag?”
“Well, I’m going to try. It has all the little gifts I’m taking; red bandana, barbed wire swizzle sticks, Texas belt buckle, chile mix. It’s a good thing I’m from Texas! What would I take if I were from Illinois? Lincoln logs!”
“I’ve got my tapes. I went to the library to check out a bunch of patriotic records, also country music. I taped it all and used some of my own favorite records, too.”
“Mom, we can send tapes back and forth, too,” she said, sensing my pain at her leaving.
The trip to the airport was long and silent. I had said this good-bye silently for months. The countdown was now…two hours for two years. How could I let her go? I was happy, excited for her. She was going into a strange land for her and into the arms of friends. Friends of mine and her father’s nearly thirty years ago. We, too, had landed at Jan Smuts International Airport in Johannesburg in February 1954, and yet it almost seems like yesterday. I wish I were going, too. Can’t go backwards. I’ll save my money and maybe I can visit.
We returned to the United States from South Africa six months before Diana was born. Now she’s a young geographer, just graduated with honors and en route to Cape Town, South Africa for graduate studies. She won a scholarship; her tuition and some of her room and board paid. But she had to pay for her own airfare. She was ready to take it, for summer after summer she had worked and saved. Her friends bought clothes, records and tapes and went to the movies. She saved her money.
“I want to travel,” she would say. “I want to see Africa and all the places I’ve heard you speak of and meet the people. If I don’t go now, my life may get too involved to travel and study abroad.”
True. Now is the best time to go. She’s so young. Yet, I had been married for over a year at her age.
Cape Agulhus, the geographic southern tip of the African continent, and the beginning of the dividing line between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Six months and many miles later in the Sudan.
I used to laugh at the empty nest syndrome we hear so much about. “Not to worry,” I would brag. “What a relief it will be when you’re all grown, off on your own.”
But of course, that didn’t count Diana. She was the baby. When the oldest child went off to college, she was in second grade. Plenty of time, yet gradually the others left. Diana passed through junior high, high school and then there was the wrench of sending her off to college. I adjusted. There were still summer vacations. And holidays and the many good times we had when we were all together. The children would say, “Let’s get a picture. We may not be together again for a long time.” This time it was true. It would be a long time now.
Now, the time has come to say goodbye to a grown-up daughter. A quick hug. A few tears.
“Bye Mom.”
“Goodbye,” I choked.
We smiled and hugged again, and now she is winging across the great United States and over the Atlantic Ocean towards the African continent, a land fraught with problems. And she is determined to glean a wonderful, full, learning and living experience. She’s done her homework, reading and rereading.
Home again, I look reluctantly in her room. So many memories there, though she carefully packed her things away, took down old bulletin boards, it looked bare and empty. It had had so much life. Her young life had not always been easy and carefree. She had to grow up at age seven when her father and I were divorced. She didn’t understand when I went to work. Her sobs alone in the night would break my own heart. Her despair at having to unlock the front door and come into an empty house after school tugged at my conscience, yet I could do nothing about. I sent her to summer camp because she had become a compulsive worker; cleaning house, doing too much yard work, cooking, and I was afraid she had forgotten how to play. The experience sparked her interest in backpacking, rafting and nature. Her world was enlarged and then one year, she herself, became a camp counselor. Another year she backpacked eighty-five miles in the High Sierra Mountains with a junior Sierra Club group. Always a loving and affectionate child, an understanding and tolerant teenager, with the usual mild teenage problems. But all in all, she was an easy child.
She was truly saddened when she saw friends and acquaintances change as they grew up and were tempted by drugs and alcohol. She learned from their mistakes. She was especially close to her family, with a special bond between her brother and sisters. Oh, there were those times, like when we were on vacation, and she fancied herself in love and made us all miserable in her anxiety to get back to Houston to be near 'him'. But this, too, passed and now a young lady has set out into the world, a little wiser and older than most twenty-two-year-olds.
People used to say, “Diana is so shy.” And I would retort, “Still waters run deep.” She is a very special child to our family. And now this is a special time in our lives, the parting. Yes, the nest is empty now. Diana will land on another continent on her twenty-second birthday. Tis said, “God loans us our children for a while.” Thank you, God, for loaning us this child. She has truly been a joy in my life.
Diana safely returned from her African adventure two and a half years later (August 1985), successfully earning a Master of Science degree in Geography from the University of Cape Town. Edith was grateful that her daughter came back in one piece after a harrowing six-month overland trip up the African continent on her homeward journey. Edith undoubtedly passed along her sense of adventure to her daughter!
