Today has been a good day. I worked hard, got a lot done, had wonderful conversations with each of my children and a very calming, clarifying chat with my younger sister. I received some enlightening emails, pondered some future possibilities, watched some very satisfying Olympic contests, and fixed and ate a good dinner with my family. I am a good kind of tired. I woke this morning once again well ahead of the 7 a.m. alarm time and rose, anxious and unsteady, to go down to the living room to engage in my morning journal writing. I had my lapboard, journal and pen, phone and crying towel all ready for the morning session. And, I used them all–including the crying towel.
I am learning to be quite patient and gentle with myself these days. I’ve never been much of a crier, preferring to be the comforter versus the comforted. But I am finding that nothing bad happens when you cry–it’s not a sign of weakness or pitifulness or any other story I told myself about why it wasn’t cool to cry. I am so over that now. This morning during a tender conversation with my daughter I cried off and on quite a bit. This is a departure for me, as I had told myself that I shouldn’t cry in front of my daughter lest I upset her. My daughter, while still relatively young (she’s 21) is a maturing young woman. I have to trust that she won’t fall apart–or be worried that she’ll think I am–if I cry in front of her. She handled it rather well, and I wonder if in fact is better that she actually sees me cry, that she understands that I am in fact human and don’t always have it all figured out, no matter how much I might pretend to. It is important for her to see (and me to remember) that being vulnerable, particularly in the presence of a loved one, doesn’t mean one is weak (vulnerability ≠ weakness). On the contrary, it may show incredible strength. In any event, my daughter didn’t fall apart at my weeping. We went on to share a productive and connected kind of day.
This week she and I are finally embarking on our much-anticipated road trip to Seattle. We are driving up to deliver her to her “what’s next”–a graduate degree program in student development. After months of planning to make this trip, we suddenly realized that the time is suddenly here, and in some ways neither of us is ready for it. Oh sure, we have almost everything packed, and Tuesday early morning we will load up her car and head out for the great Northwest. We’ve spent the better part of the past few days sorting and packing and repacking items that we’ll have to strategically arrange in her car for the 787 mile drive from here to the campus of Seattle University. Tomorrow we’ll do our last bit of running around, gather up our foodstuffs for the trip (well, go to the store), pull together our maps and itinerary, and get ready to rock and roll. And while my daughter has been chomping at the bit to get up there already, I think we’re both looking forward to the time together on the road even though it’s carrying us to inevitable separation for the first time in our lives.
I am grateful for the time I’ve had with Michal this summer–from her time here in May and June and her return last week from a few weeks out of state visiting her dad, until the time she drops me off at the Seattle airport this Friday. We’ve fought and bickered off and on over these months–some of that the result of the close quarters we live in here. But I think part of the mutual crankiness has been about creating psychic space between us so that the process of separating next Friday might be a little easier–unlikely, but a good theory nonetheless.
I’ve written a lot about my daughter over these 381 days of blogging. The series of unfortunate events that befell me early in 2011 have had as significant an impact on her life as it has on mine–different, but no less significant. She has managed the myriad changes that have taken place in my life with incredible strength, resilience, and grace. She has excelled in spite of the emotional and financial pressures she was under during her critical senior year in college and was rewarded by graduating with distinction and being accepted into five graduate schools before settling on Seattle U. I am so proud of what she’s managed to accomplish given all the difficulties. And now, she’s on to her what’s next. She knows what she wants and she’s going for it. In that, she is my role model!
I am grateful for the relationships I have with each of my two children–my connection with my son is unique and distinct from the one I share with my daughter. Tonight she is uppermost in my mind as I prepare to live farther away from her than I ever have. It’ll be a big adjustment for both of us, but I know that we are each ready for it as we move on to what’s next. There’s a line in “Mama’s Song,” the song I co-wrote for/with my mother back in 1978 that comes to my mind when I think about my relationship with my daughter, “Our memories may number many, but to me they’re all too few/I’ll always thank God in his kindness for giving me someone like you.” As I send her off this week there’ll be tears in my eyes and hers, sadness at parting but pride and joy at who she is and who she is becoming. And I am oh so grateful.
