Melissa Hawach - Flight of the Dragonfly

A s I write this letter late in the summer of 2007, Hannah, you are six and Cedar, you are on the verge of turning four (as you remind me constantly). On a beautiful sunny day in southern Alberta my family is here to help us out in the yard. I watch you all from the window of the kitchen and I laugh, Cedar, at the outfit you have put on: pink moon boots, yellow cotton shorts, a hooded bunny jumper, and every piece of play jewellery you can find. You, Hannah, on the other hand, have dutifully and sensibly put on play jeans and donned rubber gloves to look the part of yard-duty supervisor.

I can hear you, Hannah, organising. Telling everyone what needs to be done or eagerly volunteering to assist the adults in their tasks. Your grandfather (he will always be Bumpy to you) and your uncle Brendan are outside building a dog run and you are laying out wood and setting out nails according to size. You, Cedar, on the other hand, are dancing in front of the picture window, singing one of your endless songs about rainbows, balentimes (valentines) and best friends. This counts among the many moments this summer that I have caught my breath at how lucky I am that you are here with me, how far we have come, and how the present moment contrasts so sharply with the nightmare that was the summer of 2006.

Some day you will both read Flight of the Dragonfly and I thought it important to write this letter to explain to you both my intentions and my hopes for the book. I owe this to you since this is not just my story but yours as well, and one that involves people who are important and meaningful in your lives. I hope you can understand that I have done my best to tell the tale with as much respect to your involvement as I possibly could without sugar-coating the truth of what happened.

The story, in a nutshell: In the summer of 2006, you went to Australia on what was supposed to be a three-week vacation to visit your Lebanese cousins and uncles and aunts, and your dodo (grandfather) and data (grandmother). You were halfway around the world when I realised an awful truth:You had been taken by your father into a Middle Eastern country just freshly launched into an ugly war with Israel. Losing you bothand you were gone from my life almost totally for six monthswas the worst loss I have ever endured, and I pray I will never have to face its like again.

I believe that this book, painful as it will be for you to read in places, may help other left-behind parents and children facing a similar crisis. For many reasons, some practical, I decided to write the book when the wounds for all concerned were, and still are, raw and tender.

Like most parents, I want you to learn from my mistakes and to make better choices than I did. Much of what kept me moving forward during those dark days was my way of leading by exampleeven in your absence. I needed to show you both that it is not acceptable to be manipulated and bullied by the people in your life. But at the same time I never lost sight of what was best for you. At what cost to my children? was the question I asked myself repeatedly before every major decision on my marathon journey to find you and get you back. I hope you both feel that I abided by that all-important guideline.

Perhaps when you have children of your own you will comprehend the intense pain and desperation I felt while you were gone. My driving force was also my greatest fear: that you would both think I had abandoned you, that I no longer wanted you. You, Hannah, did not believe your father when he told you and Cedar that Mommy had left you both. You challenged him, I know, over and over again. But the longer we were apart, the greater the risk was that you would succumb to that horrible lie, and I could not bear the thought of you two angels carrying that in your little hearts. As the three of us lay in the same bed at night a few days after I finally had you back with me, the fear of losing you still gnawed at me.

God was listening to my anguish that night, as He had many nights before, and this brought me much peace. That night, I realised that my greatest fear had been laid to rest. You now knew the truth and would never ever again even consider the thought that I had abandoned you. Especially you, Hannie. I knew at that momentno matter what happened in the days aheadthat you would tell your younger sister how far I had travelled, how much all of us here at home had done, how much you two were loved and valued and missed.

You both should know and remember this important fact: You were born out of love, and your father and I married with the very best of intentions. What happened between the two of us was our fault, not yours, and I will be sorry for our drama touching your lives until my last day on this earth.

I am hopeful that by the time you read this, Hannah and Cedar, you will be in regular and healthy contact with your father. However, more critical to me now is that you both have the opportunity to grow up feeling secure and safe with every opportunity to become beautiful, kind and giftedqualities I already see in you as children. If, through this book, I can help educate other parents and possibly spare some pain and anguish, then this has been a worthwhile endeavour.

During the tortuous and tangled ordeal of tracking you both down, the dragonfly became my symbol of hope. For the team at home in CalgaryBumpy and Nanna, your uncles and aunts, our many friends, the dozens of people who helped us here and across the ocean and who go on helping usthe dragonfly was our totem, our good luck charm.

Only days after we learned you had been taken, two large black dragonflies entered our old house on Copperfield Gardens. Many people in Saskatchewan and Alberta were talking about the extraordinary numbers of dragonflies seen that summer. I have always loved dragonflies: When I was a tree-planter as a young woman in British Columbia, these mosquito hunters were my best friends. Later, when I was in Australia studying to become a helicopter pilot, I was reminded often how close those flying machines come to matching the flight of the dragonfly.

For some time, Hannah and Cedar, you and I had been collecting dragonfly paraphernalia, like the small piece of stained glass that still hangs from the rear-view mirror in my mini-van. My brother Adam, who does not normally make such utterances, voiced his belief that dragonflies in the house were a sign. The girls spirits, he said, are with us and theyre somehow aware that were looking for them. Adam caught the dragonflies and set them free. There was no thought of killing them. Everyone knows you do not kill a dragonfly.

Cedar, you were too young, but Hannie, I know you remember that house in Calgary with the little porch at the front where you two would play and ride your tricycles. Inside that house was where the search for the two of you began. From that most unlikely command post, we cast a net as wide as the world, and it seemed like every second day someone would come to the house with a dragonfly story. Sightings of swarms, landings on shoulders, chance encounters, so many that it struck some of us as strange. But we took heart when an old Cree medicine woman told one of us that the dragonfly ranked among the most powerful symbols on the totem. The literal English translation of the Plains Cree word for dragonfly is by two, and it apparently refers to the creature being powerful both in the water and in the air.

The dragonfly can rest its wings. Its part in the journey is now over and our own new journey, my precious ones, has begun.

Forever with all my love,