NOTE: I re-post this in honor of our travellin’ girl, bound for Florence this semester. You will recall that two years ago, Italy was epicenter of the pandemic in Europe, and the world reeled and grieved with the images of people in lock-down coming out onto their balconies to wave, greet one another, to sing, cry, and connect–to rally and to rise above. Their cry, “Jiayou,” which literally means “add oil,” is from the Chinese expression “Go for it” and was used at the time to express courage and solidarity. All I can think about is the biblical sense of oil, as in, in a lamp, as in being ready, as in filled with hoping and believing. My girl. She held on to the dream.

Ellie came home two months ago with a suitcase and a smile. She had walked out of class on a Friday afternoon at the start of her spring break, and made her way across the big city by shuttle and metro to National Airport. She had flown out of DC going the wrong direction, north to New England, and a nice four-day weekend with Grandma. Between the two of them, my two Roses, tearing up the roads and “calm” country life, they kept a steep itinerary. My mom, so eager to get her hands on college girl and my daughter, agreeable and intrigued about the prospect of a solo trip, a little “preamble” to her college break. Three movies, two theater plays (one of which was a compilation of ten plays), several puzzles, new recipes, and a shopping spree later, Ellie was exhausted by octogenarian life. Then she flew home to us. Five days of sleeping late and seeing friends, nice Easter dinner and whoop! she’s off on the train back to school. At least that’s the itinerary I planned as her travel-agent mom. I think they call that kind of ticket (Washington to Hartford to Richmond) an “open jaw” and I thought I was genius when I came up with it. Now, my mouth is still hanging open.

In the great boomerang BTS, she never left. Looking back, I get the sense that world leaders (and maybe super villains) were meeting behind closed doors all that week and canceling life while we were all perusing the candy aisle for Peeps and jelly beans. Piece by piece, the walls of life’s new tiny house fell into place: Here. You can live here. A little like Will’s tent, which is 54 square feet: my bed bone connected to my table bone’s connected to my chair bone’s connected to my computer bone’s connected to my….. and that’s IT. Pretty circumscribed little life. She got in the air to fly home, probably passing her future in transit, as that was also up in the air.

As think tanks on the growing crisis, the universities seemed to move in fits and starts as how to handle it. They extended break for a week to get online learning up and running, then extended it to April 3, then Easter. The big non-gift of the bunny that week was the devastating news that GMU, like the others, was closing for the rest of the semester. Meanwhile, Sophie’s news came like hail pelting us in already troubled skies: No school! No senior skip day! No senior trip! No Prom, no senior assassin, no AP, IB, awards, ceremonies, and noooooooo graduation. Like that funny Far Side comic on teaching, with increasingly strict rules chalked up on the blackboard finally resorting to “No thinking, no moving, and no breathing.” I didn’t want to cling to any one thing for fear of the emotional whiplash. The process was exhausting. I remember being excited that I was going to have college girl home a few extra days. By the time Easter came it was clear: the furthest mileage we would see for the next three months was hunting eggs in our back woods.

To say Ellie is a minimalist traveler is already an overstatement. She’s made two flights solo and one across the Atlantic, and each time, she is a TSA model citizen, reading the online guidelines and procedures, making suitcase manufacturers proud that somebody actually uses all those storage compartments and doesn’t stuff the thing like a Moe’s burrito. Her few articles of clothing neatly folded, maybe a spare pair of shoes and a few books, toiletries all regulation and sardine line in their see-through baggie. Who travels like this? I never heard of hauling a “carry-on” smaller than lawn tractor, bursting at the seams and able to dislocate a shoulder as you heave it onto the plane. “Gate check that for you, ma’am?” cheery flight attendants usually ask me at the gate, but I am suspicious of their smiley concern. Probably code to baggage dudes: See this one? Leave this brick sitting on the tarmac. Wasn’t that Ellie slowly backing away from me in Charles deGaulle airport as we tried to go through security coming home from France? Our little stuffers woefully overweight, necessitating a little “redistribution” right there on the floor of the airport. Both girls looked on in horror, trying to distance themselves (or die, either one) as Mom appeared to have a full body mud-wrestling contest with her suitcase to get it shut. Ellie is simply more efficient and considerate of the things she’ll truck.

She doesn’t pack it because she doesn’t own it. Takes the same minimalist approach to her room each time she comes home, as if it is a hobby: de-nesting. Dismantling. Carefully combing through her stored stuff to peel away another layer, purging with new ideas and older eyes that probably have more resolution on the future now, so she looks differently on the treasures of her youth. Like TSA, like this current situation, each pass through is more restrictive. Each time she comes home, more of her leaves. I am grateful it’s gradual. This time, the time none of us imagined, we try to make her nest a little less “kid” and a little more “college.” She’s always wanted a day bed. Okay Alexa, day bed. (We don’t really have one of those but it feels that way when a handsome metal bed frame shows up in a giant box two days later). We order another foam pad for the rock hard mattress, since hers is giving the ghosts a goodnight’s sleep up at GMU. She unpacks the little suitcase and puts her toothbrush in the kids’ bathroom. Her belongings fill a single drawer. Now her break’s been extended by a another week and they’ve added two weeks of “online learning” before students can go back. Good thing I never bought that return train ticket.

Though she has been wearing the same four shirts for the past eight weeks, I am amazed at what she packed into that bag. My girl, she packs light but she travels deep. Each day she appears in a new outfit. Some days it’s her GMU attire, dressed and ready for the day, wearing “can-do” and “okay” fresh pressed from the wash. Other days it’s sweats and a tie dye T-shirt she is particularly fond of, wearing “i’ll try” and “if you want” and “i guess so.” Some days she runs out of clothes and then it’s the comfy bathrobe she left behind. Picture that Mary Poppins carpet bag, but who needs a standing lamp? Out comes everything we do need here at the Burk house: Patience. Kindness. Industry. Cheerful help. Weird humor and an endless inventory of “fun facts.” College girl knows just what to wear to every occasion. Mandatory family outing when you wish to be alone? Family movie when you have a paper due online in three hours? Unwelcome project, chore, activity or crazy idea from Mom the minute you wake up and come downstairs? In all of these occasions she pulls the clothes out of that little carry-on and greets the day anew. You know those anxiety dreams where you show up to school buck naked only to find you have a major exam you forgot about? She may be having those dreams but in our home, she is the best dressed of all.

Though she balks when her name is added to the infamous “Burk Family Chore Chart,” in a day or two Ellie is pulling her own weight and then some. I already told you about the furniture. She and I repair and refinish furniture in the early April sunshine and warmth. She is all over it, as the news is over us. And those first weeks of shut down in March we gardened, digging and pruning, and I suppose minimalizing the accretions of the seasons. She cleans the kitchen every night. As the weeks go by, she puts her signature on our moments, showing us videos of fish in the Venice canals, researching the components of my agent orange dishwashing soap and Googling which tea bags I can compost. My education leaps exponentially. She brings me hilarious memes, shares posts on her environmentalist websites, has me edit Philosophy and Criminology papers that make my head hurt. Like every maternal unit in quarantine I am pretty mommed out. One day recently, I pass by our bedroom and notice that the bed is perfectly made. It was not so this morning. Who re-made bed? Who does that? Only someone who cares very deeply and notices everything. It is uncanny. Startling. And so very welcome.

I know she is tending our world as she tends hers, the one away from us. I know she misses her people, terribly. She misses the midday and nightly diversions of campus life, dorm life, social circles un-distanced. I wonder when the reality kicked in that she would not see them again this school year. The cancellations come like blows. Spring Break extended. School cancelled till April. Ooops, nope, school cancelled for the rest of the semester. I appreciate the way the university releases the news, their glass half full—of what, hemlock? “Online learning extended!” is just a fancy way of saying You know that yawner of a philosophy class you signed up for on Friday mornings, with a prof you love to hate? Well, that’s all done. You get to live in your childhood bedroom indefinitely and miss attending even the worst day in his class. So when the “ONLINE LEARNING EXTENDED THROUGH THE SUMMER!” message came through, we both wept at the “good” news.

Now the beloved Camp Hanover is on the chopping block, as though all the world’s a freaking revolving door–opening not opening, opening not opening, opening….not. Understandably, no one can conceive of cabin life in the time of Covid. If this camp piece goes I know her heart will break. Or will it? Apparently she brought something to wear for that occasion, too. Must be her “can do” or regroup.” Boldly she registers for an online summer class. French. “If camp doesn’t happen,” she tells me, “I’m going to register for two more and call it a semester. Then I can still get a double major and still study abroad.” It’s not the worst thing that could happen, Mom, says college girl, wiping the counter and cleaning up after dinner. It’s pretty bad but it’s not the worst. I know it’s not. Man, I need to get me some new clothes.

Coming home to us that Tuesday in March was an adventure unto itself. Her return trip was not a direct flight, so of course I had Philly on my mind and how daughter might navigate a connection if something went wrong. Years ago, the same Disney trip where I was nearly approached by Child Protective Services for putting Will on the Yeti ride from hell, I also got so carried away with the Euro-themed Epcot and the wanderlust piped out of speakers hidden in the planters there, that I let Ellie and Sophie–aged 9 and 11–go it alone through the park! They were doing the “Kimpossible” mission, bopping from country to country, and Dad and I (and little brother) were just heavy baggage. So I handed Ellie my trusty flip phone of dubious cell service and instructed them fiercely to accept no help from anyone who wasn’t (a) uniformed or (b) a mother with children. We gave them both a meeting place and time, instructed them if they had any trouble to Go to France. Go to France and just stay there until we find you. And then they were gone. There were 11,000 other people in the park that day. Eleven thousand people and my children, like balloons on a string I let go of, gone with the life breeze. Irretrievable by anything in my power. Got the same feeling in the pit of my stomach now, as Ellie’s Hartford flight sits on the runway through her first connecting flight out of Philadelphia. I know this because she is texting me about the delay, asking what to do and I am advising, “RUN! Run like crazy, Ellie, just pick up your suitcase and run through that airport like it’s on fire.” Who does that? “Mom,” she says. “Mom. We’re still on the runway. Plane hasn’t landed yet. Hasn’t even taken off.” Ooops. Truly, a parent’s advice is not always useful.

She gets to Philly in time for her second connection to take off. Probably passed it on the runway. I look up American online and see that there are only two more flights bound for Richmond that night. On any airline. Put that low-boil panic on a back burner and just start ‘er cookin’, while me and the internet become new besties (Hotels near the airport??… Rental car?… UBER?… The mom & pop roundtrip special, leaving NOW?) till she gets a plane to Richmond. Finally she lands 16 minutes before take-off of flight #3. Still I advise her to run. Like the wind, Ellie, just GO! Imagine it? First time making a connecting flight and she’s probably close to cardiac arrest. I once raced through Chicago O’Hare with two toddlers, Sophie on my shoulders, dragging Ellie alongside me like a rolly suitcase with a busted wheel, desperate to make a connection to Denver. Very bad call to put the potty-training one on my head. Racing through the terminal (rhymes with interminable) to get to our gate. Had the same flood of tears and desperation that washes over Ellie as she arrives at her gate of the just-departed Richmond flight. When she calls me back she is more composed, settled in at the new gate with her book and a little snack, with forty minutes to wait on the last flight out tonight. I collapse in the kitchen as my pot runneth over.

This week, week eight of quarantine, we get best news thus far: George Mason University is going to in-person classes this fall! It’s a welcome bookend to the one thunked down in March. No more talk of online learning. Of shuttered dorms and partial refunds. Of extensions and suspensions and closures, cancellations–the world of “well, actually, NO” we’ve been living in all these long weeks. Of course, the new normal will need to adhere to social distancing measures and CDC guidelines. I have no doubt Ellie will look up the website and read every word. She travels light but never unprepared. In an afternoon, the ordeal with no knowing is transformed to an ordeal with knowing or at least hoping, and the assurance that the same world leaders (this time without super villians) are conspiring to bring her home.

At some point in the not-never future, we are going to dust off the little suitcase and put college girl back into the stream of life. Her travelling in concrete terms is a head-smack metaphor for the journey she is on in life. A thousand open jaws. Know this: you do not land back where you took off. You take a carry-on not only because you are too cheap to check a bag or because it means you can up and race from a plane to your connecting flight, but because it symbolizes an economy of travelling. A trust that the world will have extra toiletries if you forget something, that by simplicity you are truly present to the flux and transit of life and not hung up on your gear. Nothing but the clothes on your back somehow has a way of communicating everything in your heart.

If school really does open this fall, it will be close to six months since she set out on Spring Break. How many college kids move out twice in a year? Okay, how many move out twice for the first time? Picture that back-to-school, the one we got comin’, three more months away. This time I will wave good bye for all I’m worth, because of this “family extension” we’ve all been granted. We will never be able to fit all that she gave us during this time in quarantine. The patience. The cheer and good humor. The little window into her study world and the signs of her becoming. The privilege of being part of that and witness to a world that wouldn’t have otherwise included me. Oh, the seeping comfort into a parents’ confidence and peace that your child, your child, has a place in the world. It is like sweats and a favorite hoodie for your heart every day of the week.

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