434,880 Minutes

Sixty percent of the family headed home for summer planning, camp and far off teen-tours.  They left 302 days after arrival.  There was symmetry, there was arc, there were tears.

On August 19th I found a middle child who hated the blank walls of her room, crying on her bed next to a pile of un-opened duffel bags.

On June 15th I found that child sitting on her bed beneath a wall of paper butterflies, the room stripped bare, a pile of fully-baked suitcases in the corner, crying alone about how hard it was to leave.

I found the son who wanted two years from the start, wanting more.  He was standing alone in his room, stuff everywhere, as if not packing would make the clock stop.

And the wife who couldn't bother with emotion when we arrived, her only concern her children, their school, their adjustments, their activities.  I found her behind large sunglasses and without mascara having solved her tear duct defect as she said goodbye to her London life.