The One about...

Friends

Will I ever see Harrison, Beckett, or Cora again?

English needs a word for when your child asks a gut-punch question out of the blue. English, while functional and fluid, misses the mark on the minutiae of the human experience. In the short time I lived in Brazil, I learned the importance of the word saudade. It doesn’t have an English translation, but it can mean a few different things. One definition: a form of yearning for lost love, like missing good friends living 4.500 miles away, whether you're five or forty-five.

This is the flip phone she made to make and receive calls from her friends.

I took a deep breath, which is my go-to when she hits me with the “my child asked a gut punch question out of the blue”.

Anyway, another deep breath, because as the phrase so clearly explains, I wasn’t expecting that.

Oh, I think you’ll see them again. Are you worried you won’t see them again? (Note: take three breaths next time because of course she worried she wouldn’t see them again, why else would she ask that question?!)

“You said you didn’t know how long we are going to live here, so that means we might not go back to Texas,” she explained like the court reporter coldly repeating what you just said under oath.

I did say that. I can’t honestly tell you when (if) we’ll go back, but we live here now, and I like lots of things about it. I like being so close to the beach. Do you like that? Yea, a lot, she said.

In the rush that comes with moving across the ocean, it would be easy to blow past the saudade and keep riding the adrenaline of the new, but that’s not what I wanted for this move to be for me or her. I wanted to support our ability to process the emotions that come with these changes and allow them time to sit, especially the sadness.

Honestly, she models a comfort with vulnerability for me. She made friends at the beach a few weeks back by approaching a boy of the same age and asking to play. Yes, he said. They played that day and now do beach meet-ups to play.

After just a few minutes of her asking to play with him.

However, the next time she saw a group of boys playing in the sand, she asked if she go ask them to play, like before. We were too far to hear her questions, so we could only see her standing next to three boys and an epic sand pit they were digging. She looked back at us and threw up her hands, like charades for IDK. We gave her the same in return. She turned back and seemed to say something else, and continued standing there for what felt like eternity. The next time she looked back was the moment I realized the importance of emotional compartmentalization. She doesn’t hide disappointment well. Usually, I can resist the look of disappointment for not getting a treat from a vending machine because if for nothing else, I’m the one that said no, but the look of disappointment when a group of kids refused to even respond to her request to play was brutal and unexpected. Take a deep breath. Don’t let her see you look like you're about to cry, and focus on how brave she is for just going up and asking. Process, not the result. Am I a coach or a Dad? Am I doing this right? It’s such a peculiar moment when I’m simultaneously trying to teach her and learn from her at the same time. (Should be a word for it!)

Either way, that was textbook vulnerability on display. What took her less than two months: take a chance, be vulnerable, ask to play, took me several years in Austin. At five, she’s doing an emotional calculus that is beyond my comprehension: There’s a person I could be having fun with doing something I like to do, and all I have to do is say hi and ask if I can join.

While I’m learning how to do that with her level of ease, I can at least support her learning how to write letters and send videos back to her friends in Austin. Together, we can both learn how to balance the pain of longing for the friends we had near with the joys of making new ones.

I miss my friends too.