But now that they're gone I don't need to keep the giant teddy bear that my father gave my daughter just because it was the ONLY toy he ever gave her. He's gone and now so is she, off to her first year of college. So, so goes the bear. I can clear away her cosmetics, the nail polishes from eighth grade sleepovers, the perfumes, hair sprays and rollers that she'll never use again. I don't need to keep my son's room intact— he's 3000 miles away, living and working in Brooklyn. I can move the Mad Magazines and the how-to-be-a-famous-cartoonist books to the garage and clear the space for an office, my own space, where I'll sit down to write about life... without them.
this one moves me to tears...it brings back Mahira's face waving at me as I took the taxi to the airport, i wanted to keep my eyes on her and wave until she became so little i could barely see her beautiful smile. She is happy, and isn't that what matters the most? it was very hard to hold my tears back, but i tried as much as I could, since this was my mother's advice to me. She kept her tears in when I said so long to her in 1986. Life goes full circle, and one generation follows the next...at least that is the destiny of my family, always divided, in Portuguese we say "one foot here, one foot there..where is the heart? where is home?"
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