Home again

Dropping a daughter off at college for the first time is a bit like moving an army, and a bit like allowing a piece of your heart to take root elsewhere. Exhausting preparations, packing, shopping ,and chosing what will make the 1400 mile journey and what will stay home.
A plane ride . A car ride . Visit with near by family. Then the dorm. She is swept away into the next part of her life, and I am waving goodbye.
It is what it should be. Text messages and phone calls reflect happy engaged joy. She is fine.
Back home the dog is in mourning for a mistress absent. He vies with the cat for bed space and I am resigned to a small corner. Quiet. Expected but not part of my rythmn yet. I make lists of things to clean and organize and redo. It takes the edge off. I still wake up and for a moment think of her in the next room. Then the cat bites my toe, impatient for breakfast, and I remember.
Hospital stuff. Tests. Lung nodule, 7mm. that they thought was new, was analyzed and found to be there the whole time, not changing in size over a year. Now go home, they say, and wait. Until the next scan. There is nothing here. NED . Next PET is end October.
So I can go to Parents Weekend. And be just a mom visiting her daughter.
I'm not sure how all this will balance. My push to engage my life in the shadow of the next test. I am running a bit again. I am doing a lot of things a bit again. In the shadow of the next test that is all I can figure out for now.
Except love. Love remains stable and viable and alive,no matter what darkness might arise on the horizon. Life is good.