disappointment

I am so grateful that I don't feel this very often.  It's a terrible, terrible feeling.  For an optimist, it's like digging yourself in a dark, one-ended tunnel.  It's a trap and it doesn't let you feel the way you did before. 

My sister and Mazzy were supposed to come today.  There was an airline mix-up and they couldn't make it.  It's hard to even type.  I have never been more ready for houseguests.  I channeled my mom hardcore -- I bought all of Hilary's favorite foods, had a fresh bag of diapers waiting in the room, the pack and play all ready with the softest blankets.  I've been cleaning the house for days, making random little decorating changes, doing goofy things that no one will notice but me.  We finally feel so settled here, so content, so like this is our home and all I wanted to do was share that with my number one girl.  It feels good to write it down.  I tried to hike it out but I was still tethered to my phone, tethered to some hope that they would be able to make it. 

We've been in Missoula for thirteen years.  I never, ever thought I would move away from my family.  And somewhere along the line, it just happened.  We stayed.  We made our own family.  Our friendships grew deep roots.  But Hilary has always existed outside of all of that.  I have never made peace with being away from her.  And now we have our kids and the idea of them just having some quiet days together in our yard was like a little piece of perfection in my mind.  I wanted us in a vacuum of us.  The vacuum that I gave up when I moved into this life.

We aren't childhood sisters anymore.  We aren't college, down the block mates.  We aren't in our early twenties sharing a bohemian apartment.  We are two women, so alike at our core -- the same voices, the same stance.  We are two mothers who would give anything for their people.  We are two daughters, cut from the same wacky, tangled, vibrant cloth.  Waiting another month to see her feels absolutely devastating.  But, alas, disappointment is a curse and I've gotta let it go.  They are safe.  We are too.  The summer stretches before us full of possibility and potential.  But how I wish I could have seen them today.