Leaving Planet Desmond: Part Three Re-entry

Kahlil Gibran moved me when he said, "You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth."


I'll never leave Planet Desmond, no matter how far as arrows he and his mommy shoot off into the future.  Because, yes, (get ready for the sticky sweet mixed metaphors and likenings) I don't actually live on Planet Desmond. I thought I had been swept up into that crazy, whirling, wonderfully wondrous world that sprang into existence the moment Little Big Bang exploded my world, from the inside out, as it happens.  He landed in me rather than my landing on the planet him.  By the way, his mother did the same thing to me on another plane in a different season. I rejoice at this.


I guess what I'm really trying to say is that even though I wish we could live together in the same little dust-devil for many more years to come, I am truly, sincerely, reverently and unfalteringly happy about letting them THWHITTT through the air. (That's the closest I could come to onomatopoeia for an arrow being sprung from the bow.)


It's the right and natural thing and deep down I find it vicariously adventurous.  So no more lamenting the loss of quirky play and perplexing pronouncements, the little, almost imperceptible lurking in my doorway of a midnight, the lashy over-the-shoulder looks that thinly cloak some inner fantastic imaginings, the new wonder at an old ritual, the helpful unloading and unfolding of clothes in the laundry basket, purple play dough, green security suitcase bubble-popping, pink lunches and games of chase where the object is to run squealing into the chaser's arms and get caught. 


I can't write three years of living with Little Big Bang and it's not a productive exercise to embarrass language against the pith and soul-poetry of the Desmond that is our Desmond.  So it's done.  (Well, the public lamenting is over, but I'm allowing myself the lovely inner longing for a little longer.)

 This picture was taken on their last day of play at Boston Harbor Marina.  Such a fitting farewell.