Answer: You think about the day you taught her how to ride a bicycle.
The question is, what do you think about while you watch your eighteen-year-old, youngest child pack for college?
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Drawer by drawer, box by box, groups of hangers by groups of hangers, my younger daughter brought her bedroom out into the family room to perform triage on her possessions. Very little was discarded, of course, because my daughter is a true pack-rat. She keeps things just because they are hers and woe to anyone who even suggests that a few items less would be a good thing. Periodically she’d sneak things back into her room.
And then there was the "this goes" pile.
I was idly staring at the "this goes" pile when I remembered the clear skies, the quiet street and the daughter who was so excited after every run down the street (well, I was the one running) that she clapped her hands. Her older sister was at daycare (let’s hear it for socialization before school) and her Mom was at work. In fact, it seemed like the whole street’s worth of people was somewhere else. It was just us and our voices echoed in the near-silence.
"Are you alright, Daddy?" asked the eighteen-year-old, and then she turned her face from me.
The only time my daughters call me "Daddy" is when they are under great emotional strain. My older one does it far more often, not because she’s under more strain but because we’ve established this as a signal for what she needs. There’s smart-Dad, who can’t help but by wary of his eldest because she thinks nothing of springing questions out of nowhere like, "How could Jesus be part of the House of David if Joseph wasn’t his real father?" My daughters are Jewish and the eldest seems to be on a career path towards being a Rabbi. If she doesn’t ask about religion, she’ll ask about politics. If not that, she’ll catch me with something like, "Dad, did you break up with your college girlfriend before or after graduation? Why didn’t you get married?" Anyway, she calls me "Daddy" when it’s time for a hug. Whatever is bothering her will soon be discussed with my wife.
My youngest, who feels things so deeply and totally that she has built walls of defense that are hard to penetrate, rarely calls me "Daddy" and it embarrasses her when she does. While I was thinking of quiet streets and bicycles, who knows what she was thinking?
"Are you alright, Daddy?"
"Oh, I’m fine, honey. I was just thinking that I don’t really know how to help you with this."
(I let her off the hook.)
"No problem. I’ve got it, Dad."
(She recovered herself.)
Our lives are about our relationships. What we are is locked within a shell of skin and bone and the quality of our lives is determined by what we let the rest of the world know is going on inside us. We speak. We act. We send out messages. We self-monitor for appropriateness, for self-protection, for openness, for attractiveness. At the same time, and just as important, we take into ourselves what is shared by others. We consider. We compare. We judge.
We establish a routine with most of the people we ever know in our lives. There comes a point where every pair of people seem to say, "This is as far as I am going to let you in. This is as far as I am going to know you." Your boss, your employee. Your teacher, your student. The barista at Starbucks, the member of the clergy where you worship. Everything is by agreement and everything is by trade.
And then there are those who are closest to us. We may have a routine but it’s amazing how deep we go, how much there is, how many choices and details and subtleties. These relationships are always changing, as well, as we renegotiate the passage of time and what we bring into the relationship from somewhere else. At some point, we love. We find security and comfort in the familiar and the shared. We find contentment.
But it is in the grey area, the raw edge of our relationships with those closest to us, that we find happiness, sadness, ecstasy and grief. Our senses are fully awake, we welcome and we fear, we open ourselves to the new and the unexpected because we want to be closer. We are sometimes the carriers of the new, of course, and we step into the grey with what we have extended before us and we ask the other one to accept it.
It is the interchange that we grieve when it is gone because it is rare, comparatively, and precious. The ecstasy that we feel in our lives is when the interchange is successful, sometimes so successful that we are stunned that such a thing is possible.
And so, as this father has said "good luck" to his youngest, he is aware that the grey area in between is going to change. Her life is very different, now, and she will build parts of herself that will be unfamiliar to me. It would be a mistake for me to assume she will be the same. It would be a mistake for me to resist what is new.
Besides, I’ve told her what I want. I want her to take-on college for all that it’s worth. Take good classes. Ask questions. Be aware that what she sees and hears and does outside of classes will affect her as much as anything inside. And if there’s anything she’s not sure about, I will be willing to talk about it.
And I will be ready to see what she makes of it. I have high hopes. This is the daughter whose first full sentence was, "I did it!"
On her first day of classes, which happened to be my first day of classes as well, I texted her: "Good luck today. Hey, you’re a college student!"
She texted back:
"LOL. Thanks, Dad."
algebrateacher, 95-10