“When are you coming back?” In my head I was attempting to keep the details straight. Mommy is far away, not coming back. Daddy will be far away, so…
“I’ll be gone a while. It may seem like a long time, but I will come back.”
“How will you know where to find me if you don’t take me there yourself?”
He put a hand on my shoulder. “I know where your grandparents live, Ty. I’ve been there before.”
“You have?”
He nodded. “When your mother and I were first married, right before we left for Germany. We drove out to the farm and I met her family and she got to tell them goodbye.”
“Did I come too?”
“No. You weren’t born yet. That was back when it was just your mom and me.” His voice cracked at the word “mom” and then he looked away.
I was not as close to my dad as I had been to my mother. He was away from home more often than he was at it. But at that moment, he was all I had that felt safe. I didn’t want to go on a train with people I didn’t know.
“I want to stay with you.”
He shook his head. “Families can’t come to the place I’m going to, Tyler. It’s not like Germany. I can’t bring you with me.”
“Then stay here.” Tears, hot and wet, pooled in my six-year-old eyes.
“I can’t, Tyler. I have to go. It’s my job.”
I wiped at my wet cheeks as he added, “You’ll be happy there. Trust me. You really will.”
“I don’t want to go,” I wailed. And across the playground, my grandmother wiped her eyes with a tissue. My grandfather was talking to her and stroking her back. She looked at me and tried to smile.
“Sometimes you have to go somewhere even when you don’t want to. I’m sorry, Tyler, but I’m only doing what’s best for you. I can’t…I don’t…you need someone like your grandma and your grandpa. They already love you. They always have, even though you’ve never met. And they have other kids. One is almost your exact age. You’ll be happy there. You have to trust me on this.”
“I want my mom,” I sputtered.
“I know you do. I do too. But she’s not coming back.” Dad stood up and held out his hand. “Come on, son. Let’s go meet your grandparents.”
Reluctantly, I climbed off of the swing, took his hand, and let him lead me over to the people who were going to take me home with them to live.
After we were introduced, my grandfather shook my hand as he asked me to call him Daadi.
“That sounds like ‘Daddy,’ I said softly.
He smiled. “Ya, it does. But it’s spelled differently. And it’s our word for grandfather.”
“Call me Mammi,” my grandmother said, kneeling down and opening her arms tentatively for a hug. I hesitated, but there was something so familiar about her kind face that I couldn’t help but move into her embrace.
I couldn’t remember anything about the rest of that day, not packing up or saying goodbye to my father or getting on the train.
I did remember waking up next to my grandmother a long time later, when the train blew its loud whistle. She helped me settle more comfortably across her lap, and she said something soft and gentle in another language. It sounded so familiar, like something my mother would say. Then I drifted back to sleep.
Jake and I hadn’t had to share a bedroom for a number of years now, but we did back then, and I remembered my first night, lying in this bed and listening to his gentle snores from across the room. We were both six.
Mammi had turned out the light, a funny little lantern that sounded like it was breathing when it glowed with flame. And I began to cry because I was afraid of the dark and there were no outlets for my Power Rangers night-light.
Mammi returned quickly, and after I told her why I was crying, she pulled the curtain open above the bed. “Here is your night-light, Tyler. The same one your mamm had when this was her room.”
Outside the window, near a diamond-bright star, sat the moon in a cushion of clouds, its light shining across my pillow in a broad streak of white.
“Can you show me the pond?” I whispered.
Mammi stroked my forehead. “Ya, dire kinder. Tomorrow.”
In the morning, my grandparents walked me out to my mother’s pond, and it was just as beautiful as she’d told me it was. Even better, there really was another me—another world—reflecting back from the glassy water, just as she’d said there would be.
Daadi and Mammi and the farm became my solid ground when my dad let me go. They gave me a home, a big family, a place to belong, and a faith in a heavenly Father on whom I could hang my every hope. Though my loss had been great, somehow over the years their steadfast love had helped to fill the empty, aching places inside. They hadn’t just given me somewhere to live but, ultimately, a new life.