Ten years ago Bill died when she was only twelve, and her brother, Charlie, only ten. Their mother, Janey, moved them forward through a bog of unanticipated loss and grief. They struggled but they prospered on a new road.
On May 18, Cait, a confident, long-legged beautiful co-ed in what looked like four inch heels, graduated from a University on the cliffs of the Atlantic, in Rhode Island. She goes on to complete her Master's in Applied Behavioral Analysis, a new amalgamation of cognitive behavioral psychology that didn't exist twenty years ago when I was studying to be a therapist (I didn't finish the dissertation and orals). I got to be there, proud and mystified by the passage of time--her life just beginning, mine, oh, with a goodly number of years to go, but definitely on a very different slope.
A lot of personal history rumbled through my mind--the eccentric miracle of how I even came to know this family--a story for my yet to be radically revised memoir. She is off to Greece shortly, her mother's graduation gift. I am in awe of her adventurous soul, a like soul that heretofore, I have not possessed. She is fearless already. She makes me hopeful not only for her future, but oddly, for my own. She radiates possibility and a never give up drive.
Her brother is only two years away from his own college graduation--he a little more serious, taking a different trajectory into business and finance. He would discuss matters of the market better than a cable show, and then make me laugh with a final point, "But what do I know, I'm only a twenty year old." Brother and sister are blessed with a gift of attracting others to them-and both have significant others that see their depths--at least for now; hopefully for their lifetimes.
They were just children a moment ago. We were all children a moment ago.
I've wasted a lot of time. Watching them reminded me there is little we can afford to waste.
Life is just a breath. Godspeed to Cait and Charlie as they whirl down their roads. I am fortunate to have spent some part of my walk with them.
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