Time Apart

Summer is when days are longer and less hectic for mothers like me.
Textbooks are set aside.
School uniforms are washed for the last time and then tucked away.
Cooking is now more for pleasure and less for beating the school lunch bell.
Cuddling is your alarm clock in waking hours.

Summer is also the time when my daughter has to go to Davao to see her dad and relatives.
Summer is when I'll see her off to the airport.
Summer is when we are apart.
A long time for me.

She texted after four days of getting no replies from her. 9-year-old that she is I was running through a list of reasons. It turned out she went to the beach with her cousins and simply didn't bring her cellphone. She had always been careful with things. I'm so proud of my angel. She was just making sure that she'll have fun and leaving her cellphone was a way of saying: I'll get back to you, Ma, I promise.

I can see a glimpse now of the inevitable that she'll live her own life.
She is slowly spreading her wings every birthday...An inch every summer...moments everytime we're apart.

I marvel at the changes that happened everytime she comes back. I've always had witnessed all the firsts the minute she was born.
Her first smile.
Her first time sleeping through the night.
Her expression the first time she tasted yogurt.
Her first step.
Towards me.

Away from me.

She had her first time to go to McDonald's with her best friend. Just both of them.
Her first time to cross the street.
Without me.

I marvel at those changes whenever I meet her at the airport. Taller. Sometimes she is sporting her hair a different style. New clothes. Smarter. Defined opinions more than ever.

Sweetheart, what other firsts happened during our time apart?

She stubbornly stays in my arms the whole ride back from the airport.
She needs to hug me, she says.
She needs it.
I need it too.

Summer is the time she needs to see the world and how big it is. It's her very own beach to swim. I can have the waves lap at my toes but I'll forever be at the shore. It's her own water now.

But as seasons end I'm grateful she has grown in a space of time without me. Growth doesn't stop when she isn't in my sight. Grateful that there always be growth.
But no matter how much summer memories she would weave in my absence, I'm grateful she would always be back to me.
With tighter hugs.
Leaving the delicious laziness of summer and ready to plunge into another period of franticness.
No matter.
She is with me.