My mother and I take my sister to the airport this evening. It’s been two weeks of almost non-stop laughter, and between friends and those two and my family and extended family, it feels like I’ve been lifted through something which could have been truly awful, and instead was utterly good. So much so that at the airport tonight, despite that ol’ light of my life disappearing to the other side of the globe again, all I could notice was luggage tags and eye blinds and bag straps and travel pillows and a bubbling excitement of voyages, even if I’m going nowhere right now.
Driving home in the dark while my sister texts me film options before take-off, my mother and I talk about my dad, of course. We allow the possibility, and the blessing, of binary thoughts about him at last, at last, co-existing in our contented minds.