Her friend is moving away today and after chaperoning yesterday's field trip I have no doubt that this is going to be an emotionally cataclysmic hit. There are no back-up's; it just happens to be they're the same type of weird. Their friendship flows seamlessly in and out of the boundaries of reality and imagination. They know each other well enough to negotiate the time to give in and the time to hold strong. They kiss on the cheek, hold hands, run their fingers through the others hair without much notice. The reality is, there will be no one who can soon replace this organic and unexpected evolution of adopted sisterhood.
And I think we can relate, can't we? To the internal tear that is the loss of something unexpected. To the fear of being completely and utterly alone, regardless of the fact that we typically find ourselves surrounded by moving bodies and talking heads. I think my daughter's words cause such a visceral reaction for just this reason. It isn't just about her. It's about all of us. Our need to belong. To have someone miss us. To have someone 'get' us.
The level of difficulty to attain this type of belonging varies, of course, depending on the shape of your soul print. If for instance, you live in a first grade world where everyone is a various type of animal living in an alternate universe that you have created, it requires a great deal of spiritual connection to co-habitat in such an unseen place.
Or maybe you're one of those for whom these imaginary worlds have grown up with you and God plants dreams in your visions and visions in your dreams. Maybe you see people planting gardens while children run and laugh around them in a field that now lays brown and empty. Maybe you look out into a congregation of twenty elderly people every Sunday morning and see living stories of the people who have yet to know them....Maybe you are a weird one, too.
And maybe like my daughter, maybe like me, your prayer is more than that of escaping the horror that your lunch table won't be full. At least, I hope it's more, because you deserve to know what it's like to not walk alone in whatever vision of the not yet you have been given. You deserve to have someone hold your hand as you drag them into this vision of a world yet to be created. You deserve to feel the love of friends who fit like puzzle pieces because whatever dream or vision God has given you, it's real to you now and that means whatever you're zip code happens to be, you're living in the land of the in-between and not-yet's-but-maybe-so's. And this definitely isn't a place anyone wants to live alone.
I cried Wednesday night. The night Fiona's head lay on my chest, the candle flickered, and the silence surrounded us. In the end, I don't think it was only her pain held up in the water of my eyes. I mean, isn't it my daughter's prayer that is our own...prayers for a safe flight to a new place with people as 'weird' as us.
