Change and Progress

My neighbor has these gorgeous dinnerplate dahlias that mark mid-summer with pure joyful fortitude, drinking in the summer sun and bursting into pink spiky glory just when you think, I can’t handle yet another 90-degree day. But if you want the dahlias, deep summer is where you find them.

It’s curious how life moves in cycles, which we learn and see and live from childhood, and yet when we find ourselves at the end or beginning of one – or most likely an end and then a beginning – we find ourselves a bit surprised. Either with the speed in which it came, whether fast or slow, or with the fact that it’s suddenly upon us, no matter how ponderously it crept up. My social media has been full of college freshmen moving into their dorms, photos posted by parents who I met – as it turns out – a generation ago, on elementary school playgrounds and Girl Scout meetings. In many cases we’ve lost touch, except for our common thread of aligning milestones, keeping our experience synced. Our kids skinned knees together, played soccer, changed schools, changed schools again, learned to drive, and now – are leaving home for new chapters where we are secondary characters to their plot, rather than half their world. And so, when I see the photos of kids I may not have seen in person since grade school – or sometimes ever, outside of posts from people I myself went to grade school with – it still feels personal. We are in it together.

This week was a big one at our house. My youngest got her driver’s license, and my oldest leaves at the end of the week for her first year of college, 1800 miles away. The timing of this was no coincidence, having specifically set a goal for Eva having her driver’s license before Samantha (and her driver’s license) disappeared. And yet even knowing it was coming, it feels like a lot to take in. I’m back to waiting anxiously between departure and arrival texts and trying to gauge the speed and difficulty of my commute with the eyes and reflexes of someone with less than 100 hours of driving under their belt… but trying not to voice too much apprehension, so as not to rattle confidence, but enough to also make sure my super reasonable, extremely warranted concerns are heard, but softly. Samantha will at least have the advantage of distance, while she navigates her new routine and town.

My co-worker asked today how the week was going, knowing that it had been lining up to be a emotionally demanding one. “It’s okay,” I said. “It’s just change, you know?”  and he replied, “You mean, it’s progress.” And I realized that is the better framing of this new season, even though the line between the two feels more like a square knot sometimes.

Every time I go through a new iteration of parenting, I have deeper admiration for my own. I went to school out of state, and then I studied abroad. This was during the very transitional phase of cell phones, and while some students may have had one at that point, they certainly weren’t prevalent in the first couple years I was away. When my parents put me on a plane to London, after which I had to get to the smaller town of Worcester, they did so knowing that I had a calling card in my pocket that could work at any pay phone, but no way to contact me in a hurry. But, they let me figure it out. And I did. I had an amazing, perspective changing year of growth that has continued to shape me even today.

I saw a quote recently that said, “Perhaps this next stage has more to do with who and what you’re choosing to grow with, rather than who and what you’re letting go of.” And it hit me, that positivity of new beginnings. Michelle Obama said this week that hope is making a comeback. For years, I have had a print in my living room with a Emily Dickinson quote, “Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul, and sings the song without the words, and never stops, at all.” I’ve been focusing on the wrong things for a while. I’ve been afraid of the change and haven’t seen the progress.

Eva told me that last night, when she drove the 13 miles on I-25 between school and home for the first time with no one sitting in the passenger seat, she had a smile on her face the whole time. She was nervous, but she was also confident. I watched obsessively for her to arrive, but it was already a little easier to watch her leave this morning. I’ve found that lately, it’s been a little easier to relax my grip on the reins of all my worries. That soul song seems to be coming back, not as a crescendo, but as a familiar melody humming just at the edge of the brain.

In the last 18 years of parenting, there is no age or stage that I’d rather go back to, though I love looking back. Babies are squishes of miracle development. Toddlers are fierce and precocious. Preschoolers are independent rebels with dubious fashion choices, and grade schoolers are information sponges. Middle schoolers are insightful contradictions, children one day and teens the next. But my teenagers. They are funny, and they are ambitious. They can talk to you about literature or about politics, or about the seventeen subplots of their favorite tv show. They get the joke, and they can make the joke. They want to change the world, and they are walking around with limitless potential. They are choosing who and what to grow with, and we can let them remind us to do the same.

… To your next adventures, ladies. 🤍