eastward, ho

Today, via my younger son's close-chum Brianna, I learned that he is "locked down" at Fort Bliss in Texas and will take off for first Dallas and then Sinai on Saturday. And so, if true, the yearlong clock starts ticking before he will be home again. There is a part of me that is OK -- glad that he will learn to stand in his own footprints -- and another part that is like some dumb-ass moth flitting around a flame and, to mix metaphors, wishing I could put the joey back in the kangaroo mom's warming folds.