Im-Patient Parenting
Of the things I like best about retrieving my collegiate daughter for a home visit, one is the opportunity to make the trip alone in contemplation of my navel and novel reveries, another is the scenery along the way during each of all four seasons, and the one I like best is the chance to have her alone with me in the car for Our Conversation Alone -- because I know, once we walk through the door, the next few days are going to be a Mom-and-Daughter-Moment -- a party into which (although I am not disinvited) I am not especially invited: they need one another in a way that I am wise not to distort with too much Fatherly Presence. So I spend a good deal of time thinking about this; and I spend a good deal of time thinking about this before I invite myself in.
Here is an example: Our kids are like us: we intentionally rear them to be that but we are occultly and equally able to pass along the bad with the good.
What gets me off on this particularity is an overnight email from my beloved surviving daughter, the eldest: She is a baccalaureate graduate of a major university in another state, well-worthy of the recognition, and soon on her way to a Ph.D. program at another fine school in a third state. And She is about to buy her first car (from an individual seller) using her own hardearned cash. I was about her age when i did the same, so I remember the emotions the clutching fear in wonder of whether the car was really sound, whether I really needed to spend the money, whether I was about to get taken to the cleaners; and the excitement, the enthusaism to "be able to get around on my own." An old VW Bug, either a 1968 or '69 -- I can't even recall.
The vehicle now in question is a 1991 SAAB. Problem: It is located about 100 miles from where She rests her head and haunches, and her dad is across state lines another 100 beyond that. (Her upcoming resettlement trip to the new campus is about 1,000 westward beyond the home state.) Solution: register the car in the original home state: dad will drive the 200+ to retrieve daughter Numero Uno and drive her back to where the car owner is located in order to a) check out the car again, and b) once satisfied, exchange keys, signed registration stub, and title for real cash; and then Daughter-And-Dad will drive into the home state to register the automobile there...and spend the evening celebrating a Mom-and-Daughter-Moment. The next morning we will drive back to the car location to mount the plates and wave goodbye as Mystical Offspring returns to her apartment.
[The foreboding step: packing all her unshed belongings into the "new" car and her dad's pickup truck (another trip!) in order to drive it all to the recently leased lodgings in the third state. Still, she cannot yet share her projected vision of the calendar on which that would occur so that the parents might make all necessary adjustments on their end preparatory to helping with that critical move. This is her true MO. It is hard, I observe -- Oh so hard to leave so many fine and firm friends after being with them in laughter and cheers, and the inevitable tears...over so many years...with so much yet going on: she is not the only one taking off for parts unknown as this group comes...unknit, if never ever truly apart.]
In the meanwhile, Snazzy Gal has been spending the last three nights completing a group project of extraordinary proportions that was frustrated some weeks back, but which has now been Officially Completed, tested, fixed, retested, and stored...as in "warehoused" on an open tract of land another 100 miles north from where She occupies rapidly evaporating space...awaiting its Next Big Opportunity to astound and delight others...when the Team Members come together from hither and yon to mount the Big Event.
And so we arrive at the final straw...the Truth: the travel that was planned for today to take care of the first half of the trip for transfer of the car...has been postponed: "If we're delayed a day, it's no big deal to me. I've not slept much."
My disappointments are manifold, not least because the assertion is so self-centered, and I want to shout back IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS that she "might pause to consider what adjustments have been made on the other end of this transaction! to meet her apparent needs...that are now curiously described as "it's no big deal to me."
But then I feel my own father's hand settling on my shoulder some 40+ years ago, and hear his voice saying softly in departure from my collegiate apartment or standing on the side porch of our family home "...and please, write your mother."
"I will."
Now I know. In those days it was all me and my schedule and my broken fingers and arms and my appetite to be wherever else I could be to investigate Being! rather than pick up paper and pen or visit at home for a few days because "There's so much going on and I don't have time to..." find a stamp. Time to be considerate of my parents and family. Time to comprehend that it was not only my mother who waited on my letters.
Now it is our turn. My turn. Speak softly and do not be so thick. Curb the circle. Enjoy the things one can like best. Love.
Here is an example: Our kids are like us: we intentionally rear them to be that but we are occultly and equally able to pass along the bad with the good.
What gets me off on this particularity is an overnight email from my beloved surviving daughter, the eldest: She is a baccalaureate graduate of a major university in another state, well-worthy of the recognition, and soon on her way to a Ph.D. program at another fine school in a third state. And She is about to buy her first car (from an individual seller) using her own hardearned cash. I was about her age when i did the same, so I remember the emotions the clutching fear in wonder of whether the car was really sound, whether I really needed to spend the money, whether I was about to get taken to the cleaners; and the excitement, the enthusaism to "be able to get around on my own." An old VW Bug, either a 1968 or '69 -- I can't even recall.
The vehicle now in question is a 1991 SAAB. Problem: It is located about 100 miles from where She rests her head and haunches, and her dad is across state lines another 100 beyond that. (Her upcoming resettlement trip to the new campus is about 1,000 westward beyond the home state.) Solution: register the car in the original home state: dad will drive the 200+ to retrieve daughter Numero Uno and drive her back to where the car owner is located in order to a) check out the car again, and b) once satisfied, exchange keys, signed registration stub, and title for real cash; and then Daughter-And-Dad will drive into the home state to register the automobile there...and spend the evening celebrating a Mom-and-Daughter-Moment. The next morning we will drive back to the car location to mount the plates and wave goodbye as Mystical Offspring returns to her apartment.
[The foreboding step: packing all her unshed belongings into the "new" car and her dad's pickup truck (another trip!) in order to drive it all to the recently leased lodgings in the third state. Still, she cannot yet share her projected vision of the calendar on which that would occur so that the parents might make all necessary adjustments on their end preparatory to helping with that critical move. This is her true MO. It is hard, I observe -- Oh so hard to leave so many fine and firm friends after being with them in laughter and cheers, and the inevitable tears...over so many years...with so much yet going on: she is not the only one taking off for parts unknown as this group comes...unknit, if never ever truly apart.]
In the meanwhile, Snazzy Gal has been spending the last three nights completing a group project of extraordinary proportions that was frustrated some weeks back, but which has now been Officially Completed, tested, fixed, retested, and stored...as in "warehoused" on an open tract of land another 100 miles north from where She occupies rapidly evaporating space...awaiting its Next Big Opportunity to astound and delight others...when the Team Members come together from hither and yon to mount the Big Event.
And so we arrive at the final straw...the Truth: the travel that was planned for today to take care of the first half of the trip for transfer of the car...has been postponed: "If we're delayed a day, it's no big deal to me. I've not slept much."
My disappointments are manifold, not least because the assertion is so self-centered, and I want to shout back IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS that she "might pause to consider what adjustments have been made on the other end of this transaction! to meet her apparent needs...that are now curiously described as "it's no big deal to me."
But then I feel my own father's hand settling on my shoulder some 40+ years ago, and hear his voice saying softly in departure from my collegiate apartment or standing on the side porch of our family home "...and please, write your mother."
"I will."
Now I know. In those days it was all me and my schedule and my broken fingers and arms and my appetite to be wherever else I could be to investigate Being! rather than pick up paper and pen or visit at home for a few days because "There's so much going on and I don't have time to..." find a stamp. Time to be considerate of my parents and family. Time to comprehend that it was not only my mother who waited on my letters.
Now it is our turn. My turn. Speak softly and do not be so thick. Curb the circle. Enjoy the things one can like best. Love.
posted by Duct Tape at 9:37 AM
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