The first thing I did when I woke up in our hotel room in Albuquerque was check the weather in Austin. My daughter, Ellen, lived there. I’d dreamed about her the night before—two dreams, one of her as a little girl and another of her today, a grown young lady. Austin was suffering torrential downpours. Major flooding. “I hope Ellen’s okay,” I told my husband.
It had been so long since I’d seen her. Except in my dream. Ellen was a blessing in my life—the only other girl in my house full of boys. She was always so creative and inherited my wanderlust sense of adventure. But when she was a teen, her father and I got divorced. It created distance between us, something I felt even more intensely once she went off to college on the east coast.
After she graduated, I hoped she’d move back to Tulsa, but she settled in Austin, a day’s drive away. When it came time for her to decide upon grad school, my heart leapt upon learning University of Oklahoma was her top choice. Finally, after four years, I’d be able to see my girl more often. A week later, she’d texted me to say she’d changed her mind—she would be attending Georgia Tech.
I knew it was every parent’s dream for their child to make it on their own, fly from the nest. I was proud my daughter was making her own decisions. But I missed her something fierce. With her busy young adult life, our phone conversations were sporadic, and our conflicting schedules meant we couldn’t even get together before classes started in a few weeks.
The flooding in Austin raised my mother bear instincts. Had my dream been some sort of warning? Ellen rode her bicycle everywhere—what if she was stranded someplace? Was she out of harm’s way? “I’ll just send her a quick text,” I said to my husband. Surely that wouldn’t come off as too smothering.
Ellen responded quickly. “No need to worry, Mom,” she texted back. “I’m actually travelling right now so I’m not in Austin.”
What a relief, I thought. Then the next text from Ellen came through: “I’ll be in Albuquerque tonight.”
She had no idea I was there! That evening, we were able to meet for dinner and I got to see my grown girl before she began the next chapter of her life. A mother’s dream come true.
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