Thursday, June 6, 2019

Letting go

It’s May 3, 2001 and outside it’s snowing. Nothing unusual for Laramie, Wyoming. I remember it only because I am watching the swirling, drifting snow from the window of the maternity wing of Ivinson Memorial Hospital while holding my newborn daughter. My first moments as a father. She arrived in the middle of finals during my final year of law school. But I’m not thinking about that. I want nothing more than to hold this baby girl.



It’s September 11, 2001,  a brisk but sunny fall morning in Laramie. Four months have passed. Law school is done. I’ve passed the bar. Summer is over. I’m preparing to leave for Washington, D.C., in a few weeks to start my first job out of law school. Today, though I am home with my infant daughter while Carissa, my wife, is at work. I roll out of bed, check the baby, start a pot of coffee, turn on the television. ESPN has been preempted by ABC news. The screen shows a video clip of a jet flying into a tall building in New York City. Nobody seems to know what is happening. I go upstairs and lift my daughter from her crib. I return to the television to watch the news and try to understand where and what and why.  I hold my daughter while she sleeps and whisper everything will be alright even though I don’t know that to be true..


She’s two and a half. We’re living in Boise, Idaho. She’s cuddled beside me on the couch while I read from her favorite book. She’s silently mouthing the words as I read aloud. When my mind wanders and I omit a portion of the text, she tugs my sleeve and corrects my error. . . . She’s five. She beats me at chess for the first time. I’m proud of her, a little embarrassed for myself. . . . She’s eight. We’re in the front seat of my pickup. She wants to talk about underlying causes of the Civil War and the meaning of Johnny Cash lyrics. . . .She’s six or eight or ten. We’re traveling to piano lessons, basketball practice, soccer games, to the ski slopes, to summer backpacking trips where we fish for trout in alpine lakes and snuggle beside campfires roasting misshapen marshmallows retrieved from our packs.


It’s February, 2013. Cold and gray, winter inversion season in Boise. She’s 12 and on the couch, angry, sobbing. She’s just learned she’s moving back to her temporary childhood residence of Washington, D.C., a place of which she has no memory, away from her friends, away from her home. She does not want to be held, she says. She does not want to be comforted by the parents who caused this to happen. We hold her anyway, offering reassurances. Promising her that everything will be alright. We hope we are right. 


She is 13, 15, 17. She adapts to her new home in the Maryland suburbs of D.C., slowly at first and then finds her footing. Academic summer camps. A growing circle of friends. Drivers license. Varsity athlete. Student newspaper writer and editor. A bushel of AP classes. Solo travel to Alaska, north of the Arctic Circle, to visit family. Coaching youth basketball teams. Babysitting. College visits and applications. Senior prom (she’s stunning).


Stop. Exhale. It’s June 2019 and the mid atlantic region is transitioning from spring to summer. A change of seasons. Last month she turned 18. Today she graduates high school. In August she starts college a thousand miles from home with a full-tuition scholarship and honors program invitation. She’s a picture of strength and grace and beauty. Intellectually curious. Self-motivated. Wicked sense of humor. When she tells me she will one day burn the patriarchy to the ground, I don’t know whether to laugh at her audacity or to laugh nervously and wonder about the long-term security of my societal status. Or both.


I often tell my daughter that my job as a parent is to prepare her to not need me. To be self-reliant, competent, capable, independent. The hard irony, of course, is that I don’t want her to not need me. I want to comfort her and protect her the way I could when she was an infant. To hold her and whisper that everything will be alright.


But the hard truth is that she’s ready whether I am or not. So I will remind myself that this is not the ending. Today is the start of our next chapter, the second act. And I expect more chances to celebrate her accomplishments and maybe even be a shoulder for her to lean on from time to time. 


Today, though, if feels like I need the shoulder and someone to tell me everything will be alright.

Love you, kid.


1 comment:

  1. Beautiful memories to treasure. You nailed it. She will still need you from time to time. Now as she goes to college 1000 miles away, she is helping you to take steps going forward in a new way. Your independence is now before you. Get ready, it's a whole new story...

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