Passages

Efraimstochter via Pixabay

This morning, a photo I took at JFK airport last summer at this time popped up on my Facebook timeline. After saying goodbye to my daughter, who was set to board a plane to London three days after the attacks in Manchester, my husband and I ate at a diner in the airport, and I took a picture on my phone. It was, as I recall, a quiet dinner, both of us trying to be excited for her while being simultaneously terrified.

Next weekend, we'll be sending her off again -- within the contiguous United States this time -- back to school where she'll live while she does a summer internship. Instead of flying in a plane, she'll be driving a car, one that she'll keep at school. We're going with her this time to help her settle into yet another dorm room, then taking the train back. The assistance is, as you've probably guessed, more for our benefit than hers. While she'll appreciate a navigator (we think) and some extra help for the move-in, we need this bridge to her next leap of independence.

When she left for college two summers ago, my head knew what my heart wasn't yet ready to accept -- that this house, the home in which she's spent her entire life -- would no longer be a place she'd inhabit in quite the same way ever again. There'd be holidays and summer vacations -- or parts of them, anyway -- where things would feel almost the same. There'd be mornings I'd wake up and she'd be asleep in her room across the hall, but for every one of those, there'd be many more where that room lay empty, just waiting for her whenever she might need it.

The empty room was sad at first -- or it made me sad -- but I was determined not to avoid it. Acknowledging its emptiness was, on some level, both marking time until she came back and the first step to accepting the changes that lay ahead.

I'm so proud of how independent she has become, and thrilled that she keeps finding new ways to expand her horizons. When she's home, I do my best to make the most of the time we have without being cloying or maudlin (if you asked her, though, I suspect she'd say I've crossed the line a time or two), but the next departure always looms.

These departures don't make her sad, and that's a good thing. And, though I'm rarely as terrified as I was when I put her on that plane to London, I can't say I always share her enthusiasm for moving on.

Photo via Pixabay

Still, it is as it should be. New opportunities fill her with excitement and pave the path on the journey to the person she'll become. I'll meet her anywhere on that path at any time, but now it is my daughter who determines the where and the when of these meetings. She might not know what lies at the far end of the path, but no matter how short the visit, I'm certain that she knows what lies at the other end.

Home.

And for that, I am grateful.