Heartbreak

We found out today that our young friend C will be moving to Las Vegas.... her dad accepted a new job out there. We knew that he had been looking around, but we kept hoping that he'd find something in the area here. Her dad has to report to the new job by mid-December, but they haven't decided yet if they will all move right away, or possibly C and her mom would stay here till the end of the school term in May. C has already asked her mom if she could stay with me and my husband till May, if her mom wants to move to Vegas before school ends. Of course I was thrilled at that prospect, but I told C that it was entirely up to her parents. I also told C that if she were my child, I wouldn't be leaving her with anyone, anywhere, for that length of time.

C is very upset. She doesn't want to move. She just started 9th grade this year, she has lots of friends that she grew up with here, and she flat-out doesn't want to leave Texas. She called me this afternoon to tell me the news, and I drove over to her house to give her a hug. She was holding herself together very well until she asked me if my husband would still "save her door" after she moved away. That's when we both cried.

"Her door" is the door in our home that goes from the breakfast room to the screen porch. My husband has been making pencil marks on that door for years now, tracking her height and marking the date. We've had the door painted a couple of times, but C's height-marks have never been painted over. I told her that we will always save her door. Imagine that.... to think that the door and those marks are so very important to her. More proof that it's the little things that you do for kids that mean the most, and those are the things they remember for the longest time.

Our lives will change here without C being close by. Of course we told her she could fly out here whenever she wants, and we would visit her, too. But it won't be the same as having her living five minutes away from us, and I guess we both know that. C's best friend L hasn't stopped crying since she heard the news. I told C that I would keep in touch with L, that I wouldn't stop seeing her once C and her family moved to Vegas.

C has been in my life since she was in second grade and I was her reading tutor at our local school. Who would've thought that she would be such an important little person in our lives for all these years. And many years to come, I'm sure.

One day at a time. One moment at a time. I miss her already, and they're not even packed up to move yet.