It's the fading evening before it all starts and I'm sitting out on the broken yellow bench that we always sat on when the sun sets on Sundays. I sit on the right side, my hand covering the gnawed chunk of wood where the dogs started chewing before you stopped them. My left foot is resting against a hard root. It is my usual position. I remain the same.

But you are not to my left.

Instead, you are inside, pacing back and forth, getting everything ready for the grand event.

You haven't eaten in a week. You've only drunk the clear, brown liquid that your ancestors drank when it was their time to transform. They say it helps prepare the body for the changes that are to come.

You've prepared a week's worth of meals for the children. There is a stack of frozen platters of casseroles and pasta dishes in the large chest freezer, ready for me to simply pop it into the oven and feed to them.

You've cleaned the house to the point where there are no flecks of dust flying around — although the children are sure to undo this brave deed.

You have a space ready where the transformation will take place. Dry leaves cover the coffee-shaded carpet for the bed where your crystal pod will lay. This is where you will heal. And yes, it will be you healing, I have to keep telling myself that.

It will still be you.

"I will take care of the kids while you're doing what you need to do," I say. My words stumble and fumble as if I am trying to trudge through a bog.

You smile with your bright, aquamarine eyes and let out a quivering sigh.

"I know you will," you say.

"And if I need help, my mom will be here to help," I say, smiling, rubbing your shoulder.

"I know she will," you say.

But the worry is still over your face, like a sour veil. Who could blame you? You are going on a journey that we know was coming, yet no matter how far away it would be, it would have always crept up on us. Everything is ready but us. Everything is said but what will stay unsaid.

The wind rustles the browned leaves on the oak above me. The moon is starting to come out. I am excited for you. Estatic, even. Soon, you'll be able to fly, and rise and spin. Soon, after some healing, of course, you'll be able to funnel the bright, green energy of the earth and be able to talk to the trees and jump through the wind and churn the soil and quibble with the squirrels if you're so inclined. You will smile the smile I always wanted you to smile.

Yes, I am excited. Estatic, even.

Yet I hope you know, somewhere in there, deep in that crystle pod after it consumes you after you somehow get it to come out of the leaves on the guest bedroom floor, that I love you before, during, and after. That I love you how you are now and always were. That I love the adventures we go on together, even if you are in a flawed, human form, like I am, and will remain. That we were flawed together, and that it was okay. That you were always enough.

I can't wait to see what will come out of the chrysalis. I will have to remind myself that it's still you. That inside the brilliance, it's the beautiful flawed being I perpetually love.

I hope that we will still sit on the yellow bench and look out at the world, although perhaps you will have to hover above it with your flapping spectral wings, now.

I can't wait to see you smile the smile I always want you to smile.