When it’s almost dark you can hear the wind picking up across the desert. Maybe a flagpole clanking, some far-off dogs, the day’s last birds. We are in a new development surrounded by farmlands and distant mountains. The ground is that red-brown, brick color, dry and cracked. Crickets here and there, a place that feels charged with energy. Gone is the sorrow I felt when we first brought Lily to school here. Now it’s anticipation to go. The immediacy of life through the eyes of a high school graduate, a person just become an adult. Tomorrow we drive six hours to Twin Falls, the day after that, Pendleton. Two stops, and on the third we are home. Today is the day, it’s always been that way, now it’s time to leave.

Categories: Memoir, prose, writing

Tags: creative nonfiction, pacific northwest, parenting