…But I didn’t want to say
the heart breaks, even though I know
it’s true & the breaking
can be a good thing
sometimes, like the way
my heart shatters
a little each time
I think of my friends
& how lucky in life
I’ve been to get
to know them, to have
had the time to laugh &
drink & dance & to argue
& feel hurt too.

Gina Myers, “For N&K”

We wanted to watch the sunset. At the end of a long day of hiking, which took us from our Austrian hotel up and up, through echoing, stony valleys to this Italian pass at 7300 feet, we were exhausted but committed to the darkening sky.

I’d gone to Austria to hike with my parents, starting their 40-day trek through the Italian, Austrian, German and Swiss Alps. In the midst of a slow summer, I took the train across Austria, and now tottered up the trail behind them with my week’s worth of clothing, while they trotted along gaily, minimalist packs bouncing. We hiked much of the day, stopping for lunch in a sunny, green meadow and arriving at our destination, Dreizinnenhütte, a few hours before a massive three-course dinner. Full of the improbably delicious feast, we wandered outside with cameras and coats into the chilly evening, hoping for a show.

Dad explored the top of the cliff, finding the best shots of the stony surroundings from every angle as the midsummer shadows lengthened. Mom and I sat down on a rocky ledge, our backs to a cliff and our feet far from the next edge. Across the valley, the Drei Zinnen–three battlements–stood in a stately spotlight, watching over the lodge perched precariously on the pass behind us. We leaned against the sun-warmed stone and watched.

And talked. For an hour or more.The sky changed from blue to yellow to pink, then again to blue, casting deep shadows across the wrinkled mountain faces before plunging them into black silhouettes against the last light. Far above, the first stars began to sparkle as our conversation deepened, like the night sky. To future, past, marriage and family.

Though it wasn’t even a year ago, I don’t remember everything we talked about, but I remember basking in the luxury of a long conversation, side by side and gazing at a sunset instead of a computer screen. I marveled for the hundredth time at this wise, gracious and courageous woman who raised me, and felt the unspeakable good fortune of being her daughter, being here in the Italian Alps with her, sharing a sunset.

People used to ask me often–and now slightly less often–what it’s like to live “so far from home.” It’s a complicated question, more complicated than they know, because home has become huge, enveloping oceans and continents in its wake, borne all over the world by the people who’ve helped create it. But that night, up in the mountains sharing sunset and stories with my mother, that’s what I miss. The unpressured beauty of time in the same place. It’s rare and precious, not to be wasted or taken for granted when nights like that one come along.

And even over the telephone or through the grainy windows of FaceTime and Skype, I am the most fortunate daughter. To have a mother who makes time across time zones, who listens and loves, who encourages me in this calling that’s taken me far away, and who has a home where we’ll bring our new baby into the world in November.

If I’ve begun to learn anything in this three-month venture toward parenthood, it’s been that life is unpredictable, and every day is precious. I’m sure that my 26-year-old mother, pregnant with her first child and moving to San Juan Island, never imagined that thirty years later we’d be sitting on a cliff in Italy watching the sunset. But we did, and for that, and for her, I’m endlessly thankful.