anticipating independence

a few thoughts with senior year on the horizon

The 4th of July. Independence Day. Fireworks and picnics and sparklers and mosquitos, because we do live in Michigan, after all. Yet this year, another sort of independence looms for our family, and I’m going to be writing about it more than once, because it helps me to figure out all of the complicated feelings I have surrounding Abbey’s senior year.

We’re not strangers to launching her into the world on her own. It started with a cabin and an elective archery class, a week at a time at a camp that looks like something out of a movie. Gradually, we added time, moving away from the leisurely pace of camp in Northern Michigan to ballet training in various locations around the country. She’s stayed in small towns, like Alma, Michigan, and bustling cities, like Boston, and places in between. Some roommates became lifelong friends, and some didn’t, and each year she grows more and learns more about the direction she wants to take her life. Each year, I miss her.

This year, I’m having a harder time with it all, possibly the hardest time since that very first drop off, the one where I cried as soon as I closed the car door to return home.

This time, with her senior year waiting at the end of the summer, it feels different. It feels like the beginning of the end, the end of her living with us full time, the end of our little family of four being under the same roof most days. She’s likely sick of me texting and snapping and sometimes trying to call just to hear her voice. How many times can I say, “I love you,” “I miss you,” “Be safe and have fun”? (It might be infinite. I’m not sure. I’m testing that limit more this year than I ever have.)

I feel weepy lots of moments. Still, there’s a part of me that doesn’t know how NOT to find a silver lining, and I’m figuring out ways to reframe this sadness into something more like hope. Pretending her independence won’t change anything at all is a fallacy, but there’s so much beauty in watching her discover where her next steps might take her.

I’m trying, though I have to remind myself to do it, to stop thinking of this summer as the beginning of the end and trying to think of it as the end of the beginning. This beginning phase of her life, of parenthood, may be drawing to a close, but I know the next part is going to be exhilarating for her (and heartbreaking at times, because life isn’t all exhilaration, after all). How lucky am I to be alongside her as she explores her future, as she chases dreams? And how lucky am I that she — mostly — answers my messages and doesn’t get — too — annoyed with my moments of sappiness?