There are instances when we cannot predict when a relationship will end. It can catch us unaware, and knock us off balance. Often we are not ready to say farewell and feelings sit unfinished, like a knitting project from your grandmother. Glancing at the picture of the person who is gone reminds you, as if you could forget, that the ache will not go away. In that sense, the relationship does not end at all, it just hibernates.

But other times we have fair warning, and can prepare. I am done playing with preschoolers in two months. Each morning that we have pretend tea, or sing A Man had a Hundred Sheep I savor it with an extra squeeze. Because I am turning sixty this summer it seems timely to step aside and make room for someone who can actually catch them if they bolt across the field, and who doesn't wince at sitting cross legged on the floor. Since the children I smile at twice a week are two, the age gap is fifty eight years. But I will miss them. 

My mother once told me that this new fangled trend to travel by airplane made it hard to hang on to her bearings. In her day, travel was slower, and a twelve hour car trip gave your heart a chance to transition from one place to another. In those days our family lived in Michigan, where my father designed cars for Ford. His job had displaced them from her hometown in Pennsylvania, and she was homesick. To appease her they would climb in the blue Volair on Friday after work with four unbuckled kids and head across Ohio. They would enjoy Saturday and Sunday with relatives, and after supper snuggle back in the car to head home. Then Dad put on a clean shirt and went to work on Monday. Being a family in the fifties, he did all the driving. My siblings and I slept through it. 

Transitions from one place to another, or from togetherness to separation can seem to take too long, or come too abruptly. Other times, we just wake up and find we are there.