Cowgirl

Cowgirl, originally uploaded by lucienphoto.

Cowboy has so many meanings. In this sense it means "highly individualistic" not so willing to trust or count on others.

We do the best that we can as parents. We give as unconditionally as we possibly can. We make sacrifices with the hope and expectation that those sacrifices will bear the likes of Mother Theresa or JFK, a sports or political hero. We hope for the Albert Schweitzers of the world and the kinds of winners that become Poet Laureates, or Nobel Prize Winners.

Life is not so neatly packaged though. Most of us are ordinary people. We go to work day in and day out. We toil at jobs that we sometimes love but may also abhor at times. We have great days and then some not-so-great days.

Wednesday evening was one of those not-so-great days. My daughter took off for school on her bus just as she routinely does. She probably gabbed with her friends. She laughed and she probably worried about her attire. Being a girl is tougher than I could ever begin to imagine. I have told her that I was part of the pocket protector brigade at her age. A bonafide geek. She, on the other hand, is a popular girl. She dates and she goes to dances.

But Wednesday was different. She had been planning something. Something I had no clue about. She was up at 4:30 the day before conspiring with acquaintances and cohorts to do what I can only think of as unimaginable. She did not actually go to school on Wednesday. This we found out much later. She probably continued to conspire with the people she had been busy and meticulously planning with for some time.

She somehow found herself back at home. She walked in the front door, up to her bedroom and gathered some items (she had probably pre-selected these) and stomped back downstairs. Uncharacteristically, she gave her brother a hug goodbye, expressed her love for him and walked out the door to a waiting car. That was the last that any family member saw of her.

We have had contact with her since. I hacked her cell phone (she left it if you can imagine) and texted her to the person that we suspect is her accomplice in this heartbreaking story. She did not want the cell because she knows that it has GPS tracking "capability". Smart enough to know that.

We did not have a clue that she could be so very miserable. We did not have a clue that she was contemplating her grand escape from the mundane and boring world of the day-to-day drones that we so easily and quickly become.

She has made it clear that she 1) WILL not tell us where she is; and 2) has no intention of coming home.

Chew on that!