Children Going Away
January 17, 2011
My mother used to say that your children don't go away once, they go away several times. Certainly true in my case. I left for college in the fall of 1970, then spent two summers working at home and lived with my parents for three months when I moved back to Portland in January 1978, until I could find an apartment. Our older daughter, M, has lived all over the world, and will be spending a few days living with us before she takes off for 27 months in the Peace Corps in Mali on Jan. 30. We will keep you aprised of her adventures there.
In the meantime, everyone needed a chance to say goodbye (and also happy 30th Birthday) which they got Sunday at the Little Baobob restaurant in the San Francisco Mission District, where we served up Senegalese food, and drink, and good cheer. There were 35 of us, old friends and new, high school friends and the people Vicki and I have known from baby class since M was a fetus. M supplied the Malian music that was the soundtrack for the rollicking time had by all. Her local cousins showed up (she said goodbye to her Seattle cousin, S, last week in Portland). No point in buying her much in the way of presents--you don't take very much with you when you go into the Peace Corps. So M moves away again, and the adventure begins again. We hope to see her in Mali over next Christmas vacation (not a vacation in Muslim Mali, but one in my school district).