Waving goodbye

If you've read my blog or Greg's blog for awhile, you know that my family has a cast-in-stone tradition every work morning. Greg most often leaves for work before the girls and I leave the house, so every morning, we wave goodbye to him from the window in our dining room. The "we" is usually me, Allie, and Simon the cat, who almost never misses. Julia, who you may be wondering about, can't normally tear herself away from the opportunity for two more minutes of children's cartoons before she has to go to daycare, so she only infrequently shows up to wave. Rabies the cat is indifferent to the routine.

You may not know why we have this tradition. It dates back almost 10 years now. When Greg and I were newlyweds, we packed up house and home and moved to Wisconsin, my home state and for Greg, the first time he'd ever lived in another state. We didn't know a soul in this town. To say that Greg was conflicted about the move was an understatement. He loved the new job he quickly (very quickly, damn his eyes) found, but he was tortured by how well he was doing at it (very well, obviously, since he's still there). So I started the waving tradition from the inside front steps of the townhouse apartment we lived in at the time. I was joined by a cat then too, the dearly departed Pig, but that's another story.

When I gave birth to Allie, she started joining me at the window, first with her little hand being waved from a blanket-wrapped bundle in my arms. Then she grew up enough to stand next to me, holding on to the window frame so she wouldn't fall over. Then she spent a long series of mornings waving while jumping up and down (something about preschooler energy). It got a little more complicated when she started school, because there was more to get done in the morning, like packing her backpack and making sure she combed her hair. But we always showed up to wave.

Now, Allie is almost 8. Her head reaches almost exactly the midpoint between my chest and my chin. She understands the subtleties of the glances her father and I exchange sometimes. She laughs at the right times at jokes that rely on surprising word play or puns. She knows a lot of big words. This child not only understands what the word "sophisticated" means, she uses it in correct context. But she's still a little girl.

Yesterday morning, I called her and told her Daddy was leaving. She normally takes a last bite of cereal, gets up, and comes to the window to wave. I called her again from the window as I started waving goodbye to Greg. She shrieked and ran but by the time she made it, Greg had already started to turn the corner in front of the house and he wasn't looking anymore. Allie looked up at me and huge tears welled in her eyes as her face crumpled.

"I didn't get to wave goodbye!" It was the end of the world.

Thank goodness for cell phones. She calmed down when she got to call Daddy (by now six blocks away) and tell him she was sorry she hadn't made it to wave goodbye.

I'm just thinking of how much longer she's going to want to do this tradition. And I wonder how soon I'm going to be waving goodbye to her being a little girl. Some days, it doesn't feel like too long from now.