54 days

They left this morning. I watched them board a plane leaving Mexico City to points west at the beginning of more than twenty-two hours of grueling travel. They're going to visit relatives on Taiwan. A grandmother who has not yet seen our young daughter, and whose voice strains with aching loneliness whenever she calls across the ocean. Great grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. Worshippers at the neighborhood temple who hardly understand that Mexico is not a part of the United States, much less that it is nowhere near New York. An entire network of friends and relations reaching out to catch them as they land, to blush and giggle with excitement, to spend hours slurping through steaming bowls of noodles at open-air markets, to poke one another in the ribs. To remind themselves of ties never forgotten, unbreakable. My family. 54 days.

In thirteen years Sharon and I have not spent more than ten days apart. Only five days have ever separated my three-year old son from me. My daughter and I have shared each of her 142 sunrises.

Less than twelve hours have passed. I've done a load of laundry, twice. I washed one window a few times and dusted the coffee table. Still can't bring myself to move his tricycle in out of the rain.

I'll save that for another day, or perhaps 54 of them.