Leaving on a Jet Plane

Two of Belly's favorite people, little six-year-old girls she met last year in preschool, are moving.

For one, it is a done deal---they will be halfway across the country by June. The other family has their house on the market, but no real plans as to where they will go if it sells. All I know is that they want outta here.

I'm sad about this for two reasons: one, I really like the moms and the girls. But the bigger of the two reasons is that I know Belly will be crushed. Tonight, I tried to broach the subject with her but her eyes grew big and filled with tears as she choked out, "But, I will never see them again!"

The sad thing is that she is probably right.

When I was young, it was I who did the moving. Before I was eight, I had lived in four states. I don't recall very much about this time except that the people from the first three states do not factor very much into my present-day memory. Once we moved, we were gone. Sure, I pen-palled with one friend for a few years, but our lives went in such different directions that these letters were more like stories about a shadowy person in a faraway land.

Since the age of eight, though, I've held onto my friends fiercely. I have very few relatives, so friends were my family. I've known some for over thirty years and know we'll be friends for thirty more. And, this is even with miles and miles separating us; with years, not months, passing between visits.

Unfortunately for Belly, she is too young to be able to initiate much correspondence. At her age, I assume she will be sad and hurt when her friends leave, will talk on the phone with them for a little while and then they will fade away. I hope not, but that seems like a more logical conclusion than any others I can invent, such as the thought that maybe, just maybe, she'll be giggling with one, or both, of them at the age of 30, reminiscing about their days together when they were six.