The other evening, on 9-11, my younger daughter and I went down to the Promenade to see the towers of light. I really hadn’t been feeling the anniversary this year, the day passing in routine errands like grocery shopping and walking the dog.
When I looked up at those two blazes, towering into the night, seeming to bend over the city in a variation of intensity while passing through the hazy clouds that hung in the sky, I was unexpectedly taken back to that day 12 years ago. It was my 15-year-old’s first day of preschool, the start of a new chapter in her life.
My daughters certainly have gone through a lot of episodes in their 15 and 18 years, weeks or months defined by a color, foods such as sushi or buttered noodles, and activities including gymnastics or scooters. Truly starting a new stage of life comes less often, but is easy to mark.
My older daughter’s beginning college a couple of weeks ago, while momentous for my family, wasn’t even a ripple on the world’s radar. I have many hopes for her, but there is no predicting how this new time of life will play out, what she’ll major in, the relationships she will form or the things she will try.
Twelve years ago, I knew it was going to be a big day for my family. The camera was out. Grandma had come to visit. If college is the start of one daughter’s adulthood, preschool kicked off the other’s childhood, commencing her social existence that finally extended beyond my reach and control. I had hopes then, too, that she would make friends, learn a little, have some fun, and steadily work her way through school without too many phone calls from the nurse or the principal.
In the moment, you never really know how things will work out. That day was not what we expected. Instead of celebrating her milestone, we were home early, hiding from the smoke that filled the air, and trying to find a way for grandma to get back to Boston, wondering if things would ever be the same.
Lost in all the chaos and uncertainty that followed was my girl’s accomplishment, returning to school the next week when it reopened, making friends, learning something. Events kept me from noticing that important watershed in my child’s life.
My older daughter is off at school now, e-mailing when she needs something and otherwise making her way.
My younger one is still home to argue with me, ignoring me while texting with friends, spending too much time on weekends in front of the TV. The lesson from 12 years ago, which came crashing back to me as I stood with her, watching the tourists and the memorial lights was that these moments we have are precious, noteworthy, not to be missed or ignored because everything, someday, comes to an end.
