18

                                                             

“She needs wide open spaces/Room to make her big mistakes/She needs new faces/She knows the high stakes.”—Dixie Chicks

Sometimes age is not just a number. Sometimes age is a harbinger of change, a jumping off point after which the heart and mind are too open to turn back.  In my mind I imagine an invisible tether, pulling my daughter along a path still uncertain in its direction, except that the path leads away from home.

I recently sold Olivia’s childhood bedroom set for $750. Two weeks later I had her pink and purple flower wall (complete with white picket fence) painted over with a color named “Baltic Gray”. The plain, solid gray accent wall, the full size mattress she insisted on putting on the floor to fulfill a desire for a style she calls “indie”, and her ill-advised (and unsupported) desire to get a tattoo have become the latest in a barrage of hits against a proverbial wall of my own denial. But then, I’ve always resisted my children’s maddening insistence on growing up.

When your baby turns 18, it heralds a distinct call to a next phase of life, not just for her but for me. With a light heart and an eager willingness to find where her life will lead her, Olivia is ready and I have to let her go. She said to me the other day, “I feel like I’m going to do lots of things before I find that one thing to do. I can see myself taking all kinds of classes because I’m interested in so many things.”  It’s funny to think my sleepy girl, the one who has been late to school more times than I’m inclined to admit, is this enthused about learning!

Besides college, she’s been contemplating joining Americorps, a kind of domestic Peace Corps, if you will. The idea of taking a gap year before college appeals to her sense of adventure, her belief that she can learn critical life lessons outside the traditional classroom. It’s not the conventional way all her friends are going, so I admire her even more for bucking tradition and taking a chance with an unknown entity.

She is ready to go, though as much as it all appeals to her, she does not deny she’s going to miss us, miss home and its predictable comforts. We will miss her too, more than we may realize right now. Her beautiful spirit, so evident whenever she walks into the room, is going to be absent for more days and weeks than it will be present. Seeing her face every day, especially when she shows up after her curfew, gives me the kind of peace only a parent knows. It will be difficult to learn to give that up if she leaves for parts unknown to help build a house, tutor inner city kids, clean up a bog in Louisiana. I have to trust others to take care of her and trust that she will take care of herself. Did I do a good enough job teaching her what she needs to know?

 A few days after her birthday, I invited three of Olivia’s best friends to our house and surprised her with a small, intimate birthday dinner. It was mostly a grown-up affair, with flowers and fancy dishes. Oh, and a birthday crown with an “18” on it that lights up. I tried to make it elegant, and it was, until I brought out the silly masks. Each girl held a half mask on her face, so that they looked like half themselves, half a mustachioed man or a buck-toothed clown or a furry bear. After dessert, each girl took home a goody bag. Did I mention Olivia is my baby?

Before she leaves for college or Americorps, whichever is her destiny, before I have to look at her empty bedroom, before her chair at the kitchen table goes un-sat in night after night, I want her to know, without reservation, that she is loved. I also want her to know all that I have learned in my 54 years, but she probably won’t listen. She’s got to figure it out, like I did. It really is the best way. Not that that will stop me from trying, of course.

I hope she has a blast. I hope the adventure is even better than she had dreamed. I hope 18 will be a year of finding love, of finding meaning in the memorable moments big and small. I hope she finds reassurance in times of doubt, peace amidst chaos, sisterhood among her peers.

Most of all I hope she remembers the invisible tether goes both ways.