“But his love is from everlasting to everlasting…” Psalm 103:17

In my mind I am riding a train with a weekend bag on the seat next to me and my daughter across. She has a bag, too, more carefully packed than mine, no doubt containing some “cute” outfits for our trip to the big city. She would have her phone in her lap and her ear buds in. Wearing an expression of less investment than the clothes on her back. Train rattling and clacking northward from Ashland, I would be watching her watch the world sail by and praying my plan would succeed. Thinking, Well, couldn’t be any further apart than we are now…

Today would have been the start our mother-daughter getaway trip, planned last fall and given to Sophie in February for her 18th birthday. It was the last piece in a paper chain of “blessings” I made for the girl who is hard to gift. Pedicure, park outings, Dunkin’ run, car detailing–18 outings and activities, written on index cards and strung on a cord. It was meant to be hung, like a garland, and plucked from, one delightful activity after another until the joyous milestone of her 18th had been properly marked and duly celebrated. The four-day stay in D.C was the highlight of “Sophie and Mommy’s Excellent Adventure,” presented to her months ago and now destined to live out its lifespan in a desk drawer. She will be gone before the first donut hole. In my mind we are picking polish colors and sipping Starbucks while we smile choosing our next activity.

Amtrak let me cancel all the tickets, the ones going, the ones coming–even the round trip for Ellie this Friday (In my mind she is happily installed in her dorm, finishing up her studies and readying her little suitcase to meet up and travel home with us for the holiday weekend.) Easter weekend. Luckiest mom on the train, going up with one daughter and coming home with two. Who planned this genius trip? Instead, it’s one more card on a garland of un-blessing: where everything you planned and looked forward to–prom, senior trips, plots, plans and fun, year-end celebrations, graduation–is plucked off and destroyed. I know she watches more news than I do, plugged in girl. I know she’s heard the rumblings over June-July-August. After grieving her graduation, I think she knows she may have to add beach week and our mission trip to the pile. She is not saying it, but I can see it in her eyes… Ghost in our home…girl in her room…I go in at night to check on her and there’s only a shell of her there. Amtrak has received so many cancellation requests they have it on speed dial. Press 6 to cancel your last best chance to be with your college-bound daughter….forever. They let you cancel, less 20 percent. Like you can be restored, but never again whole. Diminished. The hotel let me cancel the reservation as if we never existed.

What were we planning to see and do there? To be honest, I hadn’t gotten that far. I pictured us sunning at the tidal basin or strolling the mall, and then scoring a bench in the botanic garden for the rest of the afternoon to watch squirrels ditz about the rose garden. Maybe a museum, maybe not. Spring in the city is a gallery all its own. I figured she’d be down with masquerading as a Wisconsin Ave local, tucking into a corner booth with free wi-fi after a visit to the National Zoo. Sophie’s not a talker when you’re her mom. I pictured us maybe working out in the hotel gym and then pounding the streets to people watch, window shop, find green spaces to sit and dink on our phones. A mother-daughter getaway with less of the first two and more of the get…away. I figured we would run out of stuff to say by the end of the first day but could find enough common ground, literally, on foot.

In my mind I am turning the clocks back past the February birthday, past last fall when I planned this trip, all the way back through the years preceding it, which is the why I planned it. A mother’s last ditch effort to capture my social butterfly, to hold for the briefest moment the fleeting, weightless promise of her, who has been slowly leave-taking with every year that passed. Not a do-over. I know some who want this with their seniors. Maybe a do well. Yes, I had a lot riding on our mother-daughter weekend. That little car. Never here. And when she was our tenant she kept to herself…door closed, needing…nothing. She had so stripped and purged her pretty room prior to this that I am more than a little alarmed and sad when she contemplates moving out the furniture she “doesn’t use and I don’t really need.” A desk?? A bookcase? Your nightstand? What would be left? Shall I sublet or are you coming back?

Now, we are all grounded. Where are we going to go? In 15 days I have been to the post office twice and the grocery once. Ellie has not been off the property for a month and Will–well-traveled Will–plenty o’ wheels beneath him but not in a licensed vehicle for that same duration. Among other activities, he lost a hundred-mile hike on the Appalachian Trail his boy scout troop was training and preparing for. For Will, he thinks the idea of strapping 50 lbs on your back and hiking uphill for hours and days at a time is a grand idea. Hello boy, here’s a sack of worry and crushing disappointment, not to mention an awfully steep climb back to healing and wholeness–think you can hike that? Instead, we go for walks in the cubicle of our neighborhood. I go every day. I am trying to get up the five-mile training “Phase 1” Quartermaster Burk has laid out for me.  On the afternoon Sophie agrees one degree more readily to a walk, our third since this began, she is unusually chatty. She shares a bit of what her “home school” is doing (and not doing) and that she really isn’t in daily touch with friends any more. We talk about the mission trip, the probability it will cancel and the possibility that we could all go to Shrine Mont instead. I can hardy believe some of her questions, her reasoning. I can hardly believe she’s talking. It’s as though she is reinserting herself into our lives once deemed so distasteful. She has not been this present in our home, in our lives, for a long time. The day is sunny and warm, and I want the walk to go on forever.

Life is as still as it will ever be. Her little green car grows greener by the day, coated in pollen. Should we use up one of her “birthday blessings” and wash it for her, or will that be the day she comes down in her “Mom, what’s the point??” outfit?  She wears it quite a bit, when her “I’m not sure I can take another day of this” clothes are dirty. This mountain, my girl? You want to climb this mountain–the sheer rock face of “Gone Forever”? Why don’t we try our skills on the lesser hills of coping…denial…diversion? I am bugging her to make a “travel wall” on our downstairs hallway. What a nice project that would be, daughter, wouldn’t it? She is our resident photographer, and some of the photos she’s taken on our family trips are marvelous. Top of Mount Washington. Bridge at Epcot. Beach and bike shots on Chincoteague. And, of course, the magnificent France portfolio. Wouldn’t it be nice to display her photography and our happy trails over the years, before the Burk Motel clears out completely? There’s a good reason they’re called enlargements, my girl. Wouldn’t it be nice to GO some place, even if only in our imagination? Maybe standing back to look at the finished product, frames artfully arranged….One could almost look on it as a bay of windows and choose one to step through into a better time.

Instead, Sophie discovers a room of our house we never knew existed. You’ve probably seen that funny meme going around about “travel plans for Spring Break” in quarantine time, which is basically the blueprint of a standard 2000 square foot home. Idea being you can go from room to room but that’s about it. We have a blueprint of our home, too, but I never noticed the cavern in the upstairs bedroom.

A couple days ago she asked to paint her closet. That’s cool, we never did–ran out of paint the last time we painted her room from lime green to gray. Too cheap to buy a second gallon, so the closet has remained glowing green. This week, with all the cottage industry and furniture refinishing going on for Ellie and me, I think girl is looking for a project of her own. Now, you must know the Burk Emporium has an overstock of white hall paint. House with boy in it is frequently in touch-up mode. Any other color and you’re out of luck. “Moderate White” in eggshell? Perfect! She is scrounging for brushes and a drop cloth before I can get the lid off. Couple hours later the closet is white.

Then she asks for more paint. My acrylics. When I peek in she is painting a garden in the corner of the closet, bright orange daisies and some really pretty china blue species, all gorgeously blooming from healthy green grass. She paints as beautifully as she photographs. Little corner starts to take on a life of its own, with its cheery colors and “when in crisis, project” mentality that is keeping me going these days. Remember Harold and the purple crayon? Turns out you really can draw yourself home. Above the painted mural she pins photos and clippings of our times: medical professionals in protective gear, children in poor communities–things that weigh more heavily on a young person’s heart than a bypassed prom. On the wall she paints a verse from scripture. Installs a little carpet whose magic is slowly dawning on me. Then I realize….it’s not an art project…. It’s a prayer closet.

It’s not a wardrobe or a secret underground passage or a trap door to another land, but it is a portal nonetheless. I will not trespass this sacred effort, this hallowed space. Slowly I pull shut the bedroom door as she goes on with her painting and back away, relieved that in such a shuttered, sheltered and restricted time her journey will continue. In my mind, I was riding the train. Today, we cover a far greater distance.

Go, my Sophie girl….Go in peace.