My 18-year-old daughter was away recently visiting a friend. And the decision to let her go could not have been more difficult. For starters, she had to drive 4-5 hours which she'd never done. She'd probably clocked an hour at a time behind the wheel at best. She's a good driver, but somehow letting her drive farther and farther away from me, alone, on a road full of crazies was a serious obstacle for me. What if she broke down? Or had to visit a dark, sparsely populated rest stop? It certainly didn't help that, when I was a college student driving between Austin and Dallas, a trucker, throwing cans of something out the window, played a very scary game of cat and mouse with me until I veered off an exit at the last minute to get away. What if she encountered THAT? Now, mind you, she'd already spent a week this past summer at a college intensive in California. Without a car, she had to navigate the Los Angeles public transit system. And stay with a host family I had never met. She did beautifully. But driving through the cornfields alone for 4 hours? Are you kidding?!! Compounding the issue was the forecast of an ice storm and the tricky business of timing her travel so she would arrive before, and come home after the threat was over. Which, if you've ever had to travel during bad weather, changes by the hour. The morning she was set to leave, did not look favorable. But, then I remembered what it was like being her age, being more fearless and confident - right or wrong. I remembered one icy New Year's Eve, my mom admonishing my decision to head out with my date in his Trans Am. I thought she was being overly cautious and, in the end, we made it home just fine. And so I let her go. It's one of those incremental steps a parent learns to take in allowing their children to grow up. And, believe me, it's harder than most we take when they are small. Then, we generally hand them off to someone we trust. As they become adults, we hand them off to themselves. And, if we've done our job right - and all the stars align - they, too, will be just fine. Image: Zoe Meek
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
d.a.meek
Young at heart. Archives
December 2017
Categories |