The Tiny Suitcase

If home is where the heart is, I’m not sure I have a home.
My legal residency is in Arizona – but it has not felt like home for decades.
My heart is with beings who live far away – but I have no home of my own there.

Maybe the fact that my physical heart has literally been “broken” is a good metaphor.
Each time I come to visit my family in Minnesota, I know there is an end date.
My residency is in the desert, not on the plains.
Each time I have to leave my brilliant. creative, compassionate daughter,
my bright, imaginative, funny remarkable grandchildren,
my big, clumsy, sweet, obnoxiously adoring granddog,
my grandgeese, grandchickens, and grandducks who greet me each morning,
and the towering evergreens and huge black walnut tree
that I see from my window when I open the curtains;
each time I have to go “home,” my emotional heart breaks again.
Just the thought robs me of air and tears thick with sadness stream down my cheeks.

Life goes on.
I have things to do in another distant place.
Living in “The Cottage;”
this perfectly marvelous and perfectly challenging semi-insulated
wooden shell of a tiny house on a farm in rural Minnesota
becomes significantly less marvelous when the winter temps drop to negative numbers
and snow drifts against the door.

So, I pack for my trip back to Arizona, and I cry as I choose what to put in my suitcase
and what to leave here in the space they have so lovingly made for me.
I cry over the tiny suitcase that holds a 4-year-old’s scraps of cardboard,
2 broken balloons on a string, an empty dropper bottle, a spiral notebook and pen,
a crumbled piece of Christmas wrapping paper, 3 books, a purple knit cap,
and other treasures scavenged from the Cottage as tools for pretending.
She dashes to see me as soon as she gets home from preschool.
Her big bright beautiful eyes behind small, pale-purple glasses peek in my window,
and her grin broadens as I motion her in for playtime before dinner.
“Hello Beast” she says.  
“Welcome home, Belle” I say in a beastly voice.
The cottage instantly becomes a gothic castle until she says,
“Now let’s pretend you are Anna and I am Elsa”
and the castle is magically turned to sparkling ice.

I cry over the tiny suitcase,
and the small cardboard box she decided was the perfect crib for her plastic baby turtle.

I cry sitting in the audience watching her 14-year-old sister
playing a Who in “Seussical the Musical” because it is such a miracle that she is there,
doing what she loves; doing what I have loved since before I was her age.

I cry over my grandson’s lanky 16-year-old body draped over the couch,
his thick dark hair falling in waves over his handsome freckled face.

I cry at the thought of saying goodbye to my daughter at the airport,
and to all that I leave behind,
and to that tiny suitcase.

Over weeks and months, my feelings will numb a bit
and my emotional heart will recover a bit,
just like my physical heart has recovered a bit.
But the brokenness is never really mended.
The cracks in my emotional heart are still real,
just like the damage to my physical heart is real.

My eyes will brim with tears as the plane lifts off,
carrying me away from the love – the hugs – the laughs,
away from Elsa and Anna,
away from Belle and Beast,
away from that tiny suitcase.

I’ll be back my sweet Bella Bella.
I may be out of your sight for a while, but Mawney always comes back.
Just ask Bobo and Sissy.  Mawney always comes back.
I love you all to infinity and beyond!


LAE  11-14-23

Bella Bella Ballerina

Londyn Bella Marie,

My Bella Bella,

Princess Bell.

She lives in a castle with the "Ting" (who is me), 

not the Queen, but always the "Ting;"

Always the "Ting"

except when she decides I am something else.

She is 4 and I am 70

We can’t run and play like I could with her “Bobo” and “Sissy” 13 or 14 years ago

We can’t crawl into a small tent on the floor of the living room

and pretend to be camping on the moon.

We can’t go hunting for dragon eggs in my front yard.

Some days I can’t even rise from my chair,

and yet we play, with our imaginations at full volume.

She is the teacher,

I am the student.

She is the doctor,

I am her patient.

She is a bad fairy - and so am I

until the good fairies are needed to make things right again.

She is the Queen and I drive her carriage (which is my recliner)

through the bumpy forest and over the rushing river.

We fly to the stars in our rocket ship (recliner).

She is Beauty.

I am the Beast.

She is a Bella Bella Ballerina

and the stage is a red plush throw spread out on the floor.

Her two imaginary friends Nono and Fifi twirl and spin at her sides.

I watch from my front-row mezzanine recliner seat

and applaud with gusto when the ballet is done.

Brava!  Brava!

She smiles her beautiful smile and giggles her sweet giggle,

takes a sweeping final bow, and suddenly, she says 

"Wet's pwetend you are the 'Ting' now, Mawney. Dot it?"

Not the Queen but always the 'Ting;"

Always the 'Ting'

and she is Princess Bell.

My Bella Bella,

Londyn Bella Marie