She is a child

We were settling in Bryan's birthday hibachi when my mother dropped that my eldest niece, Ayannah, would be moving to Lebanon to live with her internet boyfriend. I vaguely knew about him; I was aware she had stayed up all night videoing with a guy for years. This may have preceded the end of her last relationship, but I do not know. She met the guy playing some online game, as is not uncommon. I have met more important people in less admirable ways.

I protested that she was too young to take such a drastic step. She was barely nineteen! What could she be thinking?

The mother reminded me that over a year ago, I had moved her younger brother Eli out of his apartment after he graduated from Boston University. Ayannah is twenty-five.

At twenty-five, I finished grad school and lived with Emily. At twenty-five, Amber married me.

"Yeah," I tried to argue, "but I wasn't flying to Lebanon to live with a near stranger!"

It is disingenuous and infantilizing to suggest a woman that age shouldn't be able to make this decision. I simple wish Ayannah wouldn't. I want her to move back to New York--or anywhere on the East Coast, though ideally the Northeast--and start a life away from the constraints of Texas, where she should have never gone. She would get an associate's degree from a community college and real work experience--not Dunkin and a dispensary. It would be a life and not a difficult one to achieve, enough that she could have it if she wanted. She does not.

I thought through her decision while the hibachi chef set food ablaze. My brother and Becky had apparently thrown up their hands and said there was nothing they could do about it--which might be true at Ayannah's age--but one wants more of a fight from parents. To my knowledge, my brother's only act of checking the boyfriend out was having him stand in front of a camera in a public place, so at least he was genuinely in Lebanon. Having to go to these lengths does suggest a certain lack. I might not have listened if my parents had tried to dissuade me at her age. I might have a weaker constitution and be less desperate to escape my lot in life by any means.

The topic lay there for weeks, though it never left the back of my mind. In small part, I respected the plan's boldness. At no age could I imagine going to such extremes. I even had to give a solid think when Amber was hoping to enter a doctoral program at Cornell, and that is still the same state as our families. To leap to a Middle Eastern country without having visited before--without, in fact, having left the United States--is an act beyond my ken.

I conjured the worst about her internet boyfriend, clearly a sex trafficking serial killer insurgent who had a dozen women in his DMs and a wife already. Did he have a job? She would not, and her strongest skill is horror movie makeup, which may not be highly prized there.

I popped into the wiki article about Lebanon to assure myself I was overreacting, at least about the country. In a minute, I had read enough about religious extremism, violent coups, and terrorism to decide I was underreacting.

My mother texts that Ayannah is at the airport and about to expatriate. There was no lead-up for me, no talk of her preparation and packing. Ayannah made a decision. A few weeks later, she was on a plane to a country where she does not practice the religion (granted, there is no official one) or speak the languages (granted, English is not an uncommon tongue).

My mother tells me to send Ayannah a few hundred dollars for incidentals since she can't access the apps Ayannah uses.

Eli had suggested that Ayannah move in with him and get a job there instead, but the nucleus of his message was to *do anything but be in Texas.* Eli has carved out a life of friends and theater in a major city, and Ayannah would have found her niche.

Ayannah told my mother she could not stand being in Texas any longer. I do not contest this. I didn't want her there in the first place. The world is large, and one can easily avoid both Texas and Lebanon. I don't know Ayannah's relationship with this man. In all this, it almost becomes secondary. Ayannah is somehow in her mid-twenties, which is well beyond moving away from one's parents and forging a life; she is far from the surly child I once knew, and I cannot honestly say I know her now, at least well enough to caution her in a way that matters. If I could provide her a better opportunity here, I would, but I cannot. Her chance may be with a Lebanese man.

My mother has promised to float Ayannah the money to come home at any point, but my niece doesn't know where home might be, only that it is not Texas and she doesn't think it is New York. I could name forty-eight other states and dozens of countries not experiencing Israeli bombings, but they do not contain her boyfriend. Why not both go to another country together? One slightly less in the war zone surrounded by geopolitical enemies?

People are literally, not figuratively, dying to escape Lebanon. Ayannah assures us it is not a problem, as she will be living a forty-minute drive from where bombs are dropped, ergo is safe. She hears the sonic booms of the planes out to murder civilians, but they do not bother her.

I tell my therapist that I wish people had loved me enough to stop me from what was harming me. People saw I struggled psychologically and let it go because it was easier than intervening and making me take ownership of the work I needed to do. I did not want to believe I had mental illnesses. It would not have been simple to get through to me. My niblings are a lens for my upbringing and what made me who I am now. Dan didn't become the father he is out of nowhere but because of and in reaction to our parents. There are clues if one is self-centered enough to assume.

The day she leaves, the United States embassy orders all Americans to get out of Lebanon as soon as possible ahead of Israel engaging in a bombing campaign to retaliate against Hezbollah for killing twelve people. Those Americans who ignore this declaration should be prepared to shelter in place long-term and absolutely tell loved ones *not to visit.*

I have an American whose loved one is moving there. Surely that means Ayannah cannot go. Won't they turn the plane around and leave this adult in my care?

All this information and fear is told to Ayannah, who says it will be okay. She does not cite any sources for this confidence beyond hating Texas.

I love Ayannah, for all my practical ignorance of her, for how I reduce her to a handful of adjectives when summarizing this development to others. When I force myself to conceive of her as a twenty-five-year-old, I can't so easily dismiss Dan's sense of helplessness. Ayannah is a woman, not even a young woman, and is making a decision that reads as rash and ill-advised to me, but it is not a child's decision. If she were a woman unrelated to me and not the girl I have loved since she was barely out of diapers, I would raise an eyebrow at the particulars--I'm not budging on that--but I would honor this as her decision to make. If she were moving to a more favorable country to join with the man she had spent more time around in person, I might even envy its boldness. I lacked that bravery at her age and possibly always. In college, it would have done me wonders to travel from the familiar.

She lands in Istanbul and finds her flight to Beirut canceled. All flights to Lebanon are due to mortal danger. What pilot (without bombs to drop) would fly there?

My mother offers Ayannah a small fortune to fly to New York. My niece declines. Her plan is then balanced between camping in a Turkish airport until Israel runs out of missiles (never) or the internet boyfriend driving sixteen hours through Syria (a country that apparently detests the Lebanese) each way to pick her up at the airport. Neither seems likely.

I'm relieved at this complication. It keeps my niece away from targeted drone attacks a little longer.

Dan and Becky will not allow Ayannah's return, even if she could be induced. They swear they will get her to Beirut, no matter the Israeli assault. Within a day, they somehow find a way. They will not elaborate on how.

My mother forwards me pictures Ayannah sent to her--I do not think my brother or sister-in-law are sharing these with my mother. Ayannah looks relieved and content beside this man--Amad, apparently. She takes pictures of the buildings and of the sunrise. I begin crying because I want her happy and fulfilled, and because I never got to have a relationship with my niece, and now never will. I cannot fathom her coming home unless forced--the expense of this alone would be prohibitive if she intended to return to Lebanon. She isn't sending these pictures to me or even acknowledging I texted her. I haven't seen her in person in years, but I miss her like crazy now because I kept up the hope I *would* see her. I can no longer fan that flame. She is the keenest demonstration of how I have failed to connect with my niblings.

My reaction surprises me, given the slightness of our relationship. I love her as one does a child one has seen grow to adulthood--and I cannot contest in the two pictures of herself she sends that she is a woman. I love her because I always have, even if I have only ever been a distant figure in her life, one who never sent a birthday present--if I was even aware when her birthday was. I loved her since she hid behind Becky's legs and growled at me when she first met me. Years later, she referred to me as Uncle Harry Potter. I love her through the pictures I have taken of her, tiny with braids on a wagon as we pick pumpkins, with spider leg eyelashes at a Halloween party. She slipped through my fingers, likely because I never reached out my hand. Unspoken, I expected that we would one day come to this point of understanding, and, I suppose, something like friendship. She is years older now than I was when we met, but I was never anyone she would have thought to rely on or confide in. I did not even know her boyfriend's name until she was gone, this man she loved enough to abandon the life she knew, if not a life that could love her.

Amber says it doesn't have to be the end; we might see her again. "Maybe it can be a destination wedding," they quip, then ask, "Are you writing that to your mom?"

I assure them I will never say that near my mother, as it would kill her. I do not think Ayannah would extend the invitation. My mother talks about how most relationships end, and what is Ayannah going to do if this one does? How will she manage in Lebanon, without a job or support system? The only option left is that we hope this doesn't end and that she books a ticket somewhere else if it does. Not Texas, surely. Likely not New York or Boston, but somewhere. She leaped into a new life (twice, if we count her moving to Texas). From what precious little I know about my niece, I suspect she won't backslide.

last watched: Kaos
reading: I Am Starting to Worry about This Black Box of Doom