From September 2002: Roots and wings
Today’s piece, like Thursday's post, is based on the always emotional, almost surreal experience of dropping kids off at college. Originally published in The Post-Crescent on September 1, 2002, this was written several days after dropping our youngest daughter off at the Manhattan School of Music in New York City.
She was less than three weeks removed from her 18th birthday, and the city was less than a year removed from the attacks of September 11, 2001. So, without question, we had some emotions.
If you have children, you spend much of your life
raising them to be the best they can, teaching lessons, giving only so much
freedom, eventually giving them your trust, hoping they’ve learned and listened
when you told them The Important Stuff.
But in that moment when you both realize your child
isn’t sleeping in your house that night, that they’re hundreds of miles away in
a very strange city, at a very strange time, … well. Tears.
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The theme of Tom’s story, written for the Green Bay
Press-Gazette, dealt with a time-honored struggle for all parents: Is it more
important to give your child the firm roots needed to succeed in life? Or is it
more important to give your child the wings of independence to experience life
on his or her own terms?
Roots or wings. I’ve been thinking about that for a
long time, and I’ve tried to play it down the middle, giving our kids enough
foundation to make good choices when they become independent.
For the past week, we’ve been discovering how well the
parental experiment has worked. My Reason For Living (RFL) and I left our
youngest daughter — two weeks after her 18th birthday — behind in New York
City, where she’s attending college.
A long way from home. Room to spread her wings. Reason
to test her roots. A place where she can explore and expand. A school where she
can learn from the best and improve her abilities.
Our feelings are strong and mixed, if that makes
sense.
We’re excited for her, and as the post-children days
pass, RFL and I are gradually finding a comfort zone. We’re coming to grips
with the unavoidable changes in our life together.
No more waiting for her to come home. No more meals
for three. No more opportunity for her to pick up something for us at the
grocery store. No more school concerts or summer music camps. We’re selling her
car, and have already taken it off the insurance bill.
But it also means that one bedroom gets — and stays —
a little cleaner, and that we have a little more freedom to move about the
country, if we choose.
We’ll enjoy those benefits soon. But today, we’re not
thinking about them much.
We miss her. We still wonder
where she is, what she’s doing. But there’s nothing we can do about it.
We’ve given her roots, and now we
hold our breath while she spreads her wings.
It’s a big city, and she’s a
little girl. Our little girl.
Last Sunday morning wasn’t the leisurely,
talk-over-a-long-breakfast time that we had hoped it would be. In the end, the
moment we’d waited 18 years to experience — the one we’d dreaded so many times —
almost flew past us.
She had spent the night at her
new dorm room, with her new roommate, a NYC native. We stayed at the hotel. By
the time we found each other on a street near the college, it was 9:30 a.m. We
needed to head to LaGuardia Airport by 11.
By the time we found a deli for
breakfast and got our food, it was past 10. Time enough to wolf down some food
and rush back to the dorm, but not enough time for meaningful,
Mom-and-Dad-know-best conversation.
We reached the dorm lobby, and
RFL said, “Well, this is it.”
I was stunned. It didn’t seem
right that 18 years of parenting should boil down to “this is it.” Not enough
time to collect my thoughts and be profound. Just enough time to cry.
They hugged. They sobbed.
“I love you so much,” the kid
told her mother.
“I love you, too,” said Mom.
A security guard at the lobby
desk, some 20 yards away, heard the sniffs and saw the embrace. “Don’t cry,
don’t cry,” she said.
A minute later, the guard came
closer, offering a roll of toilet paper to wipe away the tears. “Don’t cry.
You’ll be fine. You’re with us,” she said, drawing a laugh.
The kid stepped back to wipe her
face, then hugged me like I’ve never been hugged.
“I love you so much,” she said.
“I love you with everything I
have,” I told her. “I’m so proud of you and so excited for you, but I’m going
to miss you so much.”
“I’m going to miss you, too,” she
said through the tears. “You and Mom have been so good to me. You guys have
done so much for me.”
Nothing was left to say.
A few minutes later, her still
sobbing, we left her to find out if she has what it takes to develop a singing
career.
She has friends already. She’s
called every night. We chat online.
She’s doing well.
But we might discover a new
person when she comes home for Christmas. By then, she’ll have four months of
independence behind her.
That’s when we’ll see how we’ve
done.
Right now, I like our chances.
Roots will give you strong wings.
Copyright 2023, Dan Flannery/The Sunday Column.