Waiting.

She left last night, pulling my roller suitcase alongside her grandmother’s, her backpack bulging with a binder of songs she’d written for guitar, her face brave, but not quite sad. She has been told that Paris is extraordinary, magical, once in a lifetime, that she will have a glorious adventure. She isn’t sure this makes sense. She has been many places. Places can be beautiful and riddled with obstacles and full of scent and heat. But this place demands a commitment of some sort – a promise. Nobody – Nobody doesn’t love Paris.

She is thirteen and brave. She is thirteen and squeamish. She is thirteen and homesick at camp and homesick when she’s upstairs in the house and I am downstairs. She is thirteen and intolerant of pain. She is thirteen and she finds the dog annoying and stinky and adorable and loving. She finds her sister mean and aggravating and hilariously sweet. She is thirteen and intolerant. “You are a good human,” I told her when she cried. “Loving people, missing people, it’s good.”

She wanted to know that the documents were okay, the logistics taken care of, that there was enough money. She is a child who craves plenty. She called to say she’d bought an Archie comic – a new one – right off the rack at the airport and it felt good, to spend money like that – and she felt good- knowing she still had some. It is the beginning of the trip. It is barely the start. But she has something in her purse that feels like independence. She is a child.

Her plane has landed. We have heard nothing. She has collected her luggage and accompanied her grandmothers to the van and they are opening the door to the apartment and it is better than she’d ever imagined and there is a guitar in her room and she feels like a teenager in Paris. Her plane has landed. We have heard nothing. Her luggage was lost. Her purse was stolen. She was sick on the plane and her ears hurt and the van wasn’t ready and when it finally came she was so tired and hungry she could barely push open the door to her bedroom, where the guitar was old and missing a string and the air smelled of mold and cigarettes. Her plane has landed. We have heard nothing. She is fine.

In the car to the airport, she whispered, “I am going to write a song called good human. I don’t think it’s going to be funny, though, except that part.” She left last night, pulling a roller suitcase toward the door of the airport, where she slipped though the turnstiles bearing a ticket that says something only she can read. She is a teenager. She is a world traveler. She is in Paris. We have heard nothing.