Still it is bittersweet.
The first time I stood in the spot where this photo was taken the weather was warm. There was no ice and snow on the ground and there was none falling from the sky. We were thrilled to be moving her into this complex on the river with her college roommate who was starting medical school.
The law school the baby daughter would be attending was not as close but still not far away.
They were chasing their dreams, these to.
They were also following a plan they'd made well in advance to live together in graduate school. They've been as close as sisters. Amazing that, since they'd never met when they were assigned to room together on campus housing when they were undergraduates.
Now with graduation just weeks away, a residency in one's future, maybe far away, the lease expired and the dreams practically realized, it was time to part.
The parting was sweet sorrow. They know they'll be part of each other's futures, just not on so daily a basis. They are life friends. There's no doubt about that. With Skype and Facetime and affordable airlines flights, the time between times when they visit can be reduced in ways not possible in the past.
Still, as they sorted through things they intended to take with them and things they wanted to leave behind (in a dumpster or the local Goodwill) they grew melancholy.
I feel like I am getting a divorce," said my child, who thankfully had no personal experience with divorce but believes it would feel like what she's feeling.
Much of what occupied the apartment they acquired and used together. There were many memories attached to some of the things we packed (and trashed and donated.)
They have weathered projects and papers and exams and breakups and illnesses. Family crisises, good days, bad days, successes and failures.
They finish each other's sentences and eat off each other's plates, like the sisters neither of them have had to do such things with. They are as different as can be and so much alike at the same time.
There will be a gap in their lives, without the dailiness each with the other.
The view across the Arkansas river the day we moved them in was beautiful. The same view the day we moved them out was likewise beautiful but in a very different way.
And so, with change, comes opportunity.
The world is the oyster of these two and they are moving on into it. As they do, they will doubtless savor the time living here by the river as one of the happiest of their lives.
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