She'll probably remember, right?

Adalynn, my youngest niece, goads me into throwing her new plastic boomerang again. When she tosses it, it goes a few feet into the nearest bush. When I throw it, it does not come back to me, but I get it good enough that it either makes an attempt or goes over the bank that ends my parents' property on one side.

This will be the last Easter we spend together. My brother's family is soon to move to the middle of nowhere in Texas. He says January, but they wrecked their aboveground pool already and have taken their photos off the walls; if they remain here through the summer, I would be surprised. Their house was so trashed that we could not have Easter there, as we might otherwise. My parents have said that they are removing the Easter Orb from Dan's hands, thus the responsibility of organizing Easter each year. Dan never wanted it and often "forgot" it, so this is no bother for him.

I stay out longer with Addie and her older brothers, consciously cherishing them more because these easy times between us are to be short.

So far from me and regular contact, I wonder how they will remember my love. I regard any family member with whom I do not have regular contact -- so my extended family as a whole -- with a distant appreciation. They may love me and I, them, but it is a thin, strained interpretation of the word. I don't want that for the only children I genuinely love. I don't want to be nothing more than mailed Christmas gifts. I don't want them not to miss me, and they won't. Technology is too pervasive for them to sense my lack, but I will ache for them. COVID took too many holidays and birthdays where I might find them delightfully underfoot.

My second oldest niece, Leelee, attends college in Boston and has made clear to her parents that she will not be leaving. I do not get the sense from my sister-in-law Becky that they care to countermand this. They have enough children to spare her, and Lee has theatrical aspirations that will not be met in the Northeast quadrant of Texas.

I don't know about Yannah, the eldest. She does not live with her parents -- has not for years -- and has her long-term boyfriend Gabe, which may give her more than cause to stay. Yet, they both work at Dunkin Donuts. She is not bound to some artistic purpose that is geographically locked and can move as she pleases with her support system.

Whenever my mother thinks too long on their pending move, tears saturate her voice. My father texts me sometimes to call her because she is spiraling downward, where she will pretend at composure for a little while.

What I feel must be a tenth of what my mother does. She showed off how the kids' room in her modest home now features bunk beds that may soon go unused. (My father threatened to sleep there, possibly while fixing his own room. My mother at once forbade this.)

I am not about to tell my darling niblings that I am mourning our relationship prematurely. They would not understand. It would only make them justifiably uneasy.

I try to snap more pictures of them than I otherwise would, but the lens is wrong for the light, and they come out poorly. I want more of my beloved children to hold in my hands when they are 2000 miles away.

I hug my nephews and tell them that they need to get email addresses before they go so that I can write to them. I can tell that they find the concept antiquated and that they won't. Snapchat or estrangement, those are my choices.

What will my darlings remember of me when I am so long gone? How will my holidays be without their justifying presence?

I am satisfied that, at last, Addie seems to be at all interested in me, having long disliked me by dint of my being male or because she overwhelmingly preferred Amber's company. It does suggest that something of me will remain in her heart. She may not forget me utterly.

I do not think the pending exit of these children -- Addie mainly -- affects Amber as profoundly. She may be more a creature of the present rather than the future subjunctive mood. To her, the children may go, or they may not. It does not bear consideration until that waveform collapses. This may be a healthier way of living, but it does not permit conscious hypodermic affection because this moment can be better spent with them than on one's phone. Then again, she only got her first COVID shot the day before and was just told that she has deficient vitamin D rather than something that would better explain a month of headaches. She is owed her relaxation, and gods know I get worn out around children from time to time.

Soon in Xenology: A new job and car.

last watched: Castlevania
reading: No Boundary