Watching and Waiting

Last night I sat with my daughter in her world, her world of a local restaurant, a small place down the road from her home in Connecticut, a place where she and her husband and their friends gather and relax and eat (and eat and eat and eat....you've got to try the salmon!). A place where the owner (and cook) emerges from the kitchen and hugs his customers, no, not his customers, his guests. He hugs them and greets them by name, makes sure they are having fun, that they like their food, that he knows who is there so he can return to the kitchen and cook for them.

I sat with my daughter in her world and watched her ease with the people in this place, her place. I watched her ease of being absorbed into the embrace of this community and in that ease I see that she is happy. She has found her place, her home. I watched her and in her I saw the child she was and the woman she is and know that her life is here and now and as she waits, waits yet again for her husband to serve, to serve his men and our country, that while she waits she does not wait alone, she will not wait alone. She has a place where others will wait with her.

I sat with my daughter in her world and watched her. While I watched, she waits. She waits with patience, she waits with confidence, she waits with love, both in her for her husband and around her from her friends. While she does this waiting, while she waits in small blocks of time now as her husband and his troops prepare, she prepares for the longer wait, the big wait. This big wait that comes for her in a matter of weeks will come and through it I will wait with her. I will wait and watch. Watch and wait. And as we do this, as she does this I will picture her in her place, picture her in the arms of her community, in the arms of those who love her, in the arms of this place that has become her home.