Two hours and I leave. My only regret? The picture on my Blog looks like an old man, eyes like a deer caught in the headlights. If I’d known, I would have stood in the sun, dashing countenance smiling at the horizon. I thought we were just seeing if my camera worked!

Everything fit in my bags, weight limits met with room (a little) to spare. Alice Ripley’s gift of pencils and stickers for the school tucked in perfectly. Fudgemonkey! What am I going to do with my car?

No sweat-eedah. Daughter number 4 and her husband will collect it tonight at Logan Express.

No sweat-eedah? Old family history looms. The term is G.I. jargon brought home decades ago by my brother Bob on his return from his first tour in Korea. To our ears, Korean words always seem to end with “needah.”

Now I’ve got last loose ends, kids to drop off at their work, and brief good-buys. More old family history. Somehow, my kids “get it” that Barrett’s don’t make a big a scene at good-byes. We hold our tears and fears inside, where they belong, not hidden, but unspoken, un-fanned flames of hope and faith that say to each other, “This is what we do, and then we come home.”

A kiss perhaps, a hug, and a smiling “see you later,” like the moment my mother and I put Bob on the plane that led to Viet Nam. And we watch no one disappear in the distance. We turn and walk away.

“Never,” my mother taught me. “Never watch until you can’t see anymore. We turn and go. He won’t look back. He learned that from your father.”

Time for me to cut a choagie. A big choagie, all the way to Kabul, and back.