Airport goodbye

It may be only for just over a week.

But still I can feel a tickle of little tears as they greet my eyes.

The first airport goodbye.

Yet it feels like only a minute since I felt your first kick, heard your first word and watched you take your first steps.

As I stand in this airport, enveloped by those excited for their holiday, happy to return home or nonchalantly heading off on a weekly business commute, I slowly feel a melting pot of emotions pushing their way to the surface.

Perhaps those tears are speckled with a tiny bit of sadness and nostalgia. A mother’s grief. A letting go of those little hands that searched for hers when they were unsure or lost or scared.

Yet beyond those elements of subdued sadness, more than anything those tears are bursting with an immense sense of excitement for you. An excitement for everything that lies ahead for you. Excited for your journey, your adventure, for all the new things you will see, you will learn, and you will experience.

Those tears are delicately lined with an immense sense of love and pride. Pride that you have the courage to look beyond what you are used to, to step away from your comfort zone and from the safety of what you know. To go beyond, to go further and to find what you want from yourself and life.

My tears are affectionately dusted with happiness, eager for you to learn about yourself and the potential this world has to offer you.

But more than that, they are overflowing with hope. A hope that you, my first born child who has taught me so much about life and about myself over the past nineteen years, recognises all that you have to offer.

While this world has so much to give, my tears are full of a hope that you have the strength, courage and determination to realize the potential that you too hold to give to this world.