A Departure

Our daughter moved to Washington state in December. It was not a sudden move. There were months of advance notice, but still, that act of leaving the house, the drive to the airport, the hugs good bye, felt abrupt. It wasn't until just the other day that its permanence struck me. The day her car was loaded onto the transport vehicle for its haul up north.

Walking home from the Park & Ride lot that afternoon, the rendezvous point with the transporter because his big rig couldn't maneuver our residential street, left me sad at the loss of our daughter. I say loss, but really her budding independence should be, and is, applauded. That feeling of loss was amply countermanded with a feeling of pride at her independent spirit and eagerness to build her own life.

The familial dynamic has spun its course. As youngsters a parent can have as much of their children as they want. The parent is the child's everything, preparing their meals, social coordinator, their transportation, operating the devices. Eventually, that dynamic turns and the power is shifted to the child. When that time comes, the parent gets only as much of the child as the child allows. For us, that dynamic shift occurred in their early teen years.

We had our familial struggles during Covid. The kids were in high school and college, their lives just starting out, with them dipping their toes into the water that would become their lives. Then Covid and the rescinding of life as we knew it. High school and college from the comforts of their bedrooms was not the comfort every child wants or needs. Certainly not our daughter. Covid was unkind to her.

From the depths of those dark times, if I could have projected forward four years to find that we'd be the happy and healthy family that we are today, I would have enthusiastically made that trade. So here we are today, and it's time for me to make good on that trade.

During those struggles, my wife and I came to terms with our changing parental duties. A parent's job evolves over the years. When they're helpless little animals issuing their unconditional love, or even when they're toddlers or adolescents, and their love is no longer unconditional, it's a parent's job to protect them. For us, at that point during Covid, it was no longer time for us to simply protect the children. It was time to focus on preparing them. Prepare them for life as independent adults. Step one, we had to accept them as their own autonomous humans that they were growing into. Then, the parent must let go. For us, that letting go occurred in December when she moved away.

She's been too big for our sandbox, her home, our home, since those early Covid years. She had resolved herself to reluctant and persistent patience in knowing what had to be accomplished before disembarking into the world. She graduated from high school, then got accepted into college, then graduated from there, in under three years. She was in a hurry. With that, the threshold for the independent life she sought had been attained.

There is a joyful pain knowing that we've done our part and remain a happy family. The pain of missing a piece of the family. While we are no longer wholly contained in the same premises, we remain whole by the collective parts remaining agreeable.

There is an emptiness, not just because her bedroom is vacant. It will likely soon abate and fill with pleasant memories of her, and even some of the struggles, because they revealed her determination. The very things which may have been at the foot of the early struggles, the parent-child battles of will, knowing these skills have been amply built out to be wielded for practical purposes as she steps out on her own, away from the safe sandbox we've played out for her over the years.

We love you, Boogie, and we're proud of you. Please come home often to visit . . . or we'll rent your room out in retaliation.