Last month was the service for John's father. We gathered in the country church to say goodbye.  Incredibly all nine of my children were in the pews, as well as a pack of other descendants. 

Personally I am terrible at goodbyes. One of my children mentioned this after she left for school in another state and wondered why there was no fanfare. I shrugged. Celebrating when people I love leave does not call to me. But when they come home I make twelve foot signs and stock the shelves with their favorite treats. 

Yet goodbyes are inevitable. Unless we all morph into conjoined twins, there will be partings and times of disconnect. 

This week my son boarded a plane for Scotland. The limits of my ability to offer him a ride on a frozen January day, or slip some cash into his pocket stare at me like handcuffs. He has to do this on his own. 

Thirty years ago a minister in Florida, wiser than me, told me something I have held on to. I was worried about my kids wandering down dark paths, making mistakes.

"They know the way home."

Somehow it broke through the facade of permanence. In the decades since, there have been many times that the people I want to hold in a vice have wandered away. Yet freedom is less of an embellishment to love, and more of the air in which it breaths. Take it away and the relationship suffocates. 

And so, reluctantly, I bid the people I care about most, adieu. Or maybe I should practice the phrase in Gaelic.

A misst ye sae muckle!