The Fireworks of Ham

I sent my little Florida blonde baby off to college. The little guy, born with the bump on his head. The quiet baby who never spoke for years, just observed.

It's just orientation. He'll be back tomorrow. But he has to spend the NIGHT. Away, like a grown up, out at the college near the beach, out there, like in the direction he's going. I'm hoping the road will curve around, the one he's building, and he'll follow it and it'll have branching off places like back to here, where I'm waiting. With a lot of ham. That worked with Becky the dog, she never wanders away when I'm on the trail with the horses. She stays right with us because when I first took her out, I threw down handfuls of ham sometimes. She knows the fireworks of ham could happen at any moment. Ham keeps her near.

I don't even bring the ham anymore when we go riding. I mean to, but I always forget. But she still stays, loyally. Half because she likes me I think, and half hoping with some vague ham memory.

It's also Lilly's 11th birthday, yes today, this same off to college day. That tiny baby born into the middle of our already life, the chaos of big brother and sister, handled and mishandled and dropped and shoved into the middle of all of us on the bed at naptime. This is a person who has never known quiet. She'll be at home on a crowded dance floor in a NY City nightclub. She'll own the Staples Center when she plays professional basketball in front of packed in millions (if she adds tall to her already fierce). She'll never know fear of crowds. She made us a crowd. She crowned our crowd.

I slog through the days of graduation and moving on and birth and rebirth, with people doing it all the time around me, (does it have to happen all at ONCE, she sighs), celebrating with balloons and bank accounts and dressing up clothes and cheers. But I am in the center of that hurricane, and I'm still holding the ham.

I hope it works.