Tick Tock

He sits on the floor watching as his guitar is restrung.  We've eaten dinner at the table and now he is there in the music room all full of food, relaxed, and engaged.  She is upstairs lost in the world of animated action controlled by her own hands as she tries again and again to navigate a make believe hard place: far preferable to navigating the hard places of real life.  She is clean, fed, entertained, cuddled, and adored and now she is up there relaxed and at peace.  I have driven, fed, bathed, supervised, entertained, been captive audience; I have cooked and cleaned, held, tickled, scolded, nagged, teased, cajoled, instructed, enforced, loved, loved, loved, and now I sit here in this space inbetween them both and I watch the clock.

In 14 minutes we will be in the car, in the dark, in the cold, on our way away from this day of love and reconnection, speeding onward to break apart again all that we built up in these few hours.  These last minutes go too quick - they each need their own space to process that our day is done and that separation lies in wait.  I can't help them except to offer that space, that safe space, the love that endures the separateness and the separating. 

I hate these fleeting last minutes - it is hell, a tick tock tick tock tick tock hell.