Because I Said So

Like many parents of kids going off to college, I was worried about missing their physical presence. But part of me - not the nice part, I guess - was secretly excited that in leaving, they would take a lot of drama and maintenance with them. Not that I’m not crazy about them, but let’s be honest, kids will occasionally suck you dry.

I’m ready to get sucked dry again. Not to keen and wail like some stereotypical empty nester - Maddie is still very much in the house - but I feel a gap, almost a physical one from their absence.

It is not always palpable, but at certain times and in certain places, I feel their absence like a missing limb. And it is not always when you would expect. The other night, my friend John, a nice Minnesota boy, was in town from Bogota, where he works as a foreign correspondent. We went out in New York City, first to a tapas place in kind of skeevy neighborhood - it’s cheap and the food is good - and then we went downtown to see a rock band called Nada Surf. Nada Surf is one of those peppy, poppy alternative bands that connects with a lot of folks, including geezer rockers like me. On the way home, we put on more music and chattered about movies, other bands, and life in general.

And as good a time as I had, I thought about how much more fun it would have been if Erin was along. She would have loved the show, talked us into staying for all of it, and been full of opinions about all manner of things on the way home. I called her when I got home - it was two in the morning, but she is a vampire like her daddy - and we talked deep into the night. But it was not the same as being together. “I miss you Dad,” she said, when we finally signed off. “And me for you, Dolly.”

In the same way, Meagan and I stay in touch, but it is not really actually touching. Part of being a parent, at least my version of it, involves being able to get your arms around the physical being of your offspring. We can remain connected, but it is not the same as having Meagan here. The other night as I watched a pal of Maddie’s spend a great deal of time deconstructing the menu at a Vietnamese restaurant before she was willing to order, it reminded me so much of Meagan. Although I may be one of the more impatient men on earth, I somehow found this bit of drama endearing after years of watching Meagan do the math on what she would put in the holy temple of her body.

I will see them both soon enough. We have learned the hard way even if it is a short and expensive trip home, it is worth every nickel, but there is a realization as time marches on that it will never be the same again. They have, in fact, been unleashed on the world. And if they are not lost to me precisely, they are less easy to find, less easy to get my arms around.

We took a family vacation during the winter and it was a reminder that while Jill, Maddie and I are a pretty impressive power trio, it is no match for when the whole band is playing. There is a fullness and complexity to the sound of it - some of sour notes to be sure - that cannot be matched by even we hardy three.

It has the effect of sorting out priorities. I have never been a big guy on the whole Griswold vacation thing, but there is a big part of me that is already plotting our next caper. Given how busy everyone is, the only way we really come together is when we are somewhere else. I have begun to understand why other people scrimp and save to put together hugely expensive vacations. We never really could get it together - pretty much spending what we have on expenses - but now I feel like sneaking money into a vacation kitty at the precise time we are also paying for tuition. Not great market timing there.

One of the ironies of family life is that as children grow, some of their cuter aspects get rubbed out and are replaced by more complex edges, things you would notice in someone else before you might recognize in your own flesh and blood. But it is these edges, these idiosyncrasies - Erin is a completely confident in all of her opinions while Meagan is constantly searching for justice in all matters - that render them even more interesting in the present tense. You are spending time with your child, who you know by heart, but they have also turned into these interesting people who are coming to know so much more of the world. It makes them fascinating to spend time around. I crave their company as semi-adults because they are the kind of people that I’d like to hang out with anyway.

Their lives, of course, are their own. I can visit and get introduced around - I have and I will - but huge parts of them exist in a space I not only don’t control, but don’t know very well. I worry less about their well-being - they are making good choices, give or take - than how much I am missing. I have become the nosy old mother who wants to know every single thing and don’t want them to skip anything in the telling.

Yesterday, I assembled a little care package, something I do all too often. It included books and movies, some t-shirts that made me think of them, and a note along with a little mad money. (Even as old as I am, I know what really makes the college student’s heart sing.) But when I looked at the pile, I though something was missing.

And then I went down in the basement and pulled a picture for each of them from the time when they were small, from back when we not only lived together, but lived for each other. Some part of me filled with that weird happy/sad parent thing when I tucked those pictures in. Our family has five people in it and it doesn’t matter that two of them are gone. Their spaces remain even when they are not here.

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