“So that’s why the airfare was cheap,” mused my twenty-year-old daughter, Emma, when I told her the weather report.

Emma was about to go to a tropical island in the Caribbean during hurricane season. She was traveling internationally for the first time, with a boy we had met only once. After three weeks together, she would continue solo to an organic farm in Costa Rica. This from a girl so shy she could barely bring herself to ask for directions on Muni.

I had reconciled myself to the adventure with the unknown boy. I had even managed to convince myself that a girl who abandoned raking the garden after encountering a dead centipede could find happiness, or at least herself, while working the land.

Great things could happen by putting herself outside of her comfort zone and cell phone reach . . .  couldn’t they?

But as I awoke to NPR’s report on the number of Category 5 hurricanes ready to slam the Caribbean, the effects of global warming were no longer abstract.

Nor was my equanimity intact.

“We can’t let her go,” I fretted to my husband. “I bet John Walker Lindh’s parents wished they’d put their foot down when he insisted on studying in Yemen.”

Then I thought of the minister who addressed us before we entrusted our other daughter to a church group building houses in a part of Mexico riddled with drug murders.

“The world is a risky place,” the minister said. “I worry about this each time my own children travel to faraway countries. What if they get caught up in violence? What if there is an attack? But then I realize that the far greater risk comes from never leaving home.”

Emma boarded a plane the day after Hurricane Gustav hit the island. She was there during Ike’s devastation a couple weeks later. Fortunately, I barely had time to panic—with the miracle of generators and Internet cafes on the well-prepared island, she e-mailed us within hours. Other than suffering a stubbed toe and boredom during the brief blackout, she’s having the time of her life.

The storm blew away the timid girl we drove to the airport not so long ago. She’s never coming back. Instead, we eagerly await the confident and intrepid world traveler who will soon wash up on our shores.

By Lorrie Goldin

Labels: a child abroad, Lorrie Goldin

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# posted by Writing Mamas Salon @ 12:01 AM