There is a soft tapping at our front door, and there she stands, with the tucking-her-hair-behind-her-ear nervousness with which she begins every visit. My daughter opens the door, and she slips in quietly. “We're moving,” she says simply. “I just came to say goodbye.”

        Her departure comes as no surprise to us, for from the beginning of our friendship with this beautiful, sensitive teen-ager, we had known she would not stay long. Her family has moved all over the country, pulling up roots nearly every year to follow her mother's career. What surprises us is simply that she has the strength to say goodbye. Farewells take their toll after a while. So much easier to just slip away.

In a rush
        She knows that her mother wants her to hurry, that the moving van is there. So, of course, she doesn't hurry at all. She sits down in our kitchen, and tells us all the things she had not felt the urgency to say before. Out come secret ambitions, hidden gifts, self-doubts — the things, it seems, she has never stayed long enough to confide before. This time, she is not leaving until someone knows.

        She dreams of being a specialized sort of artist, and making such a success of it that everyone will know her name, perhaps because for much of her life nobody could remember it. She was simply the New Girl.

        We hand her a pencil and paper, and she sits sketching at the counter, cataloging her strengths and weaknesses as she works. We simply listen because we are not sure what to say. Then she holds up a sketch of a delicate, curved hand so lifelike it appears to move.

        Wonderful, we say. You have a gift. We envy your talent. We insist she sign it, and she smiles and writes her name with a flourish in the corner.

        Her mother telephones. They're leaving now. The moving van has gone. The car is packed. They expected her back a half-hour ago.

        Don't forget us when you're famous, we admonish her. Come back and see us.

        She gives us stiff hugs. Our eyes fill with tears. She slips back out the door.

        My daughter and I stand in the kitchen, feeling desperately sad. I put the drawing on the refrigerator, as proof that she was here. “She just wanted to make sure that somebody knew the first thing about her before she was gone,” I say quietly.

Off again — and again
        They are precious, these children who are just passing through. These children's names are written in a different color of ink at the bottom of a teacher's grade book. Dad is offered a promotion, and their bikes and baby pictures are loaded into the moving van again. Or the rent check is due, and once again there is not enough money.

        Belongings can be bumped along in the back of moving vans. Emotions cannot. Like age rings on a tree, the circles of shell these children build around their hearts reveal how many times they have packed and gone.

        If one passes into your life, or your classroom, please do not let her go before she has written her name somewhere. Preferably in your heart.

        Perhaps we can convince them, then, to keep on trying, to keep on connecting, to share their gifts — even tiny pieces of them — before they go.

        Then perhaps they will come back one day, if only to know that they were here.

Cranley is council's choice for vacancy
Schools ask court to prod state
2 stadiums eat dollars, expert says
Mall on hold after pullout by Nordstrom
RAMSEY: Transient kids
Schools' pie squared
MU moves radioactive material
Home for teens meets inspection
HOWARD: Neighborhoods
MCNUTT: Proudly served
Senate OKs baby-haven bill
Shops open in coach stop
Warren Co. deputy charged in fight
Potential conflict presents problems
Killer's sentence delayed again
Airport rated well last Christmas
Asphyxiation not ruled out in three deaths
Bargain or junk in eye of buyer
Boycott is threatened for Mardi Gras meeting
General Fund receipts fall in November
Hearing against mayor will go on
Henry aide racks up overtime
Kenton Dem chief to resign
Officer on desk duty after assault charge
Ohio colleges give bang for the buck
Patton backs Florida recount
Pupils taught in pioneer style
Reading a story to grandkids far away
Students make, serve hot meals
Teachers earn national honor
Their message: 'Surrender, Al'
Water running out in 88 Ky. counties
Kentucky News Briefs
Tristate A.M. Report