Goodbye...Hello

This morning I said goodbye to my daughter. I cried all night long thinking about her leaving and then woke up this morning at five o:clock and started crying again in the shower.
Despite the fact that my daughter is twenty three years old, it's still hard for me to say goodbye to her. You'd think that after all the goodbyes we've had in her life it would get easier but it does not.

This all started for me when she was little. She has always been the one to just jump out there with that, "Oooh, this looks like fun. Bye, see ya later", kind of attitude.
Our first goodbye was at the daycare. We were only there to check the place out, to see if we and she liked it.
Well, the place met up to our standards, it was clean and safe. We watch our daughter interacting joyfully with the other children, saw how content she was, signed the paperwork and we were ready to go.
We said our goodbyes to the daycare's administrator, turned to call for our child and she did not want to come.

I was floored. She wanted to stay, just like that. At one point we teased her, pretending to walk away, saying we were going to leave without her and she just threw up her hand and waved goodbye.

Mind you this was totally different experience for me. When my son was little I used to have to pry him off my leg with a crowbar every morning after dropping him at the daycare.
We could not leave him with anyone. We had to try different ways to divert his attention and then sneak out every time only to have my heart broken while listening to him screaming and crying as I left the building.

No, not so with our daughter. It was me who would cry every morning as she was crowbared from my arms.

Me and my daughter have always had, well, a funny kind of relationship. I'm sure those of you with daughters can relate.
I love my daughter to death and I know she feels the same for me. We both love and can't wait to see each other but we also know when it's time to leave each other alone...we both love our space. She may look like her dad, but this trait I know she gets from me.
But no matter how much she has rubbed my nerves and no matter how much I look forward to the arrival of her departure, saying goodbye to her is still one of the hardest things for me do.

So, there I stood this morning at her departure gate crying with no shame, holding her in a death grip not wanting to let her go and she telling me, "Mom, stop crying."
I force my husband to wait there with me until she has walked through security.
I watched her take off her shoes, remove, her jewelry, place her bag through the x-ray machine, go through the metal detector, sit, put her shoes and jewelry back on and I waited.
I waited just as I had that first day I dropped her off at the daycare center. I knew that she would eventually turn around, give me that look to let me know she would be fine. And then, there it is, that smile of hers, the one I hope she has all her life, "Oooh, this looks like fun. Bye, see ya later."

And then she was gone. My husband saves me from drowning in my own tears and we leave the terminal.

We drive home in silence. I slowly resign myself to the fact that she is gone and walk through the door, the house is quiet again.
Hey, I've been waiting for this. I start a load of laundry, think about all things things I've been neglecting since she had been here and I start to breath again. It's a new year and I've got plans!

Just as I am starting to get into my little groove my husband gets a text message from our daughter.
"She can't get on the plane and won't be able to get out for another three days", he says. He goes to pick her back up from the airport.

I want to start crying all over again.
Hello...