My daughter, back from college, will be living at home this summer, internship in hand and job in the works. As we piled her bags, boxes, shelves and equipment into the dining room for decontamination and storage, I feel she is more present than I expected. This isn’t a complaint, but rather a surprise.
I guess I thought once she left for school, every passing day would take her and her life farther away from me — that there would be less contact in all forms. The reality has been different — in a really nice way.
She’s been home for vacations and the odd weekend. She invited the family up to watch her play rugby a couple of times. When I’ve played delivery man and driven things up to her, she’s made time to have lunch with me. She’s even brought friends home to crash on our floor and empty our cabinets.
Part of me wonders why. I mean, she is just not supposed to want to be home and spend time with us, right? When I went off to college it was escape and I certainly stayed away as much as possible. There were other factors, I admit. I went to school a 24-hour car ride away from home while my daughter is a very manageable two hours from Brooklyn in the bucolic Connecticut countryside. I also had few friends to hang with when I went back to the ’hood, while my girl has a steady stream of pals to share lunch and dinner with.
I wonder, though, if there’s something else going on. On her first visit home, my coed arrived with blonde hair, a transformation from her natural brown. I snapped a couple of pictures and enjoyed the transformation. Another vacation, she was a brunette again. Today she has blue streaks in her tresses and I’m taking in the change.
I’m in my 50s and often when I’m with my mother I feel like a 19-year-old again: surely, belligerent, annoyed when she says I’ve always been such-and-such a way, making me feel static in her mind and experience.
My daughter is changing, as she has been her entire life, and I never know which iteration will walk in the door. Rather than wallow in nostalgia for some younger version of her, frozen in time through a picture or a preschool art project, my task now is to get on with it, embrace the young woman I find before me and discover new things we can share and enjoy together.
Today she is playing her guitar and completely excited by theater and music. Coincidentally, my mother is coming for a visit next week, so I will take them to a play. My only concern is that forever on, my mother will think her granddaughter is into theater. I just hope I don’t get stuck there but can see my child for who she is and evolves into being. Then I think she’ll keep feeling comfortable at home, where she can always be herself.
