![She’s a Rising Sun (or, “How to Cope [or Not] When Your Child Leaves Home”)](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5581e5e7e4b0413a0b0bf903/1626044531768-75G9209GIF2S4HSIH7XQ/public.jpeg)
She’s a Rising Sun (or, “How to Cope [or Not] When Your Child Leaves Home”)
Damascus, Syria; October 2003
Savannah will leave home in a few short weeks. She’s ready, more or less. Has incredible time-management and self-motivation capabilities. Needs work on cleaning up after herself and understanding laundry complexities, like the difference between whites and darks. I suspect she’ll figure it out. She always does. She’s a rising sun.
Reston, Virginia; November 2005
I don’t know what the world will look like without Savannah there by my shoulder. It feels like she’s always been there. I’ve been a lot of places, but I’ve never been anywhere she hasn’t been too. Is it possible to truly be anywhere without her? I don’t know. In a way, I doubt it.
Qasr Dab’a, Jordan; February 2009
It was never supposed to be this way. Shannon and I were supposed to go places, just the two of us. But then Savannah came, way too soon, nine months after the wedding, the absolute perfect thing at the absolute perfect time. We cleaned her off, kissed her nose, bought plane tickets to Istanbul, train tickets from Istanbul to Damascus, packed a couple suitcases and a baby bag, and off we went.
Al-Shafaa, Saudi Arabia; February 2013
A train platform in a speck of a town somewhere in Turkey. We’re milling around, Shannon, me, and a baby, looking for goat cheese and bread. The train behind us is catching its breath. In a few minutes it will creak back into motion and carry us further toward I do not know what.
Lago Coatepeque, El Salvador; January 2016
Shannon has the baby in one arm, seven months old, all eyes and a couple slivers of baby teeth cresting shiny gums, like tiny white suns rising. We carried Savannah across the ocean, then the Bosphorus, then onto this train wending its way east through the rain and sun.
Weligama, Sri Lanka; January 2018
A man on the platform, I can’t remember if he was old or young. I only remember a dark face, kind eyes. He says he’s Libyan, asks in Arabic where we’re from. I respond in Arabic, his face lights up, he smiles at my daughter, and she smiles back. He asks her name. Savannah, we tell him. He repeats it with difficulty, then simply says, I will call her Susu. He holds out his arms for her. Shannon does not hesitate, and neither do I. Nothing seems more natural in this moment than passing our baby to the Libyan man on the train platform.
Reston, Virginia; December 2018
The memory is vague, maybe I don’t remember it right, but it’s golden. The man scoops her up. He cradles her like she’s the sun and the moon and the stars. In my mind’s eye he sways just a little, like he’s absently slow dancing. He lifts her gently toward his mustached lips, tilts her tiny ear upward, and I hear him whisper to her, “Bismallah al-Rahman al-Raheem…” Though I’m sure it’s a hitch in my memory, it seems the world reverently stalls in mid-spin while he softly recites the Fatiha — a Qur’anic invocation, a blessing on newborn children — to little Savannah, beside a coughing train and a folding table topped with goat cheese, bottled water, and warm flat bread.
Tilal Liwa, United Arab Emirates; December 2019
Then he smiles, passes my daughter back to me. Something is different. I’ve held Savannah a lot of times, but now, for the first time, like I somehow know something I didn’t before, I cradle her like she’s the sun and the moon and the stars. He watches, smiles again, says her name one more time, Susu, then he’s gone, and I still don’t know where to.
Provo, Utah; December 2020
We still call her Susu, a nickname from some other place and some other time. I did not know where we were going when we stood on a train platform in rural Turkey all those years ago. But now we’re there. It’s a good place. Savannah is older now, sometimes she thinks she knows where she’ll go from here, but she doesn’t. She’ll get there just the same. She’s a rising sun.
