Letting your oldest child go, leaving home, heading off on his or her journey to study, earn, or just live, is a terribly painful moment. As a father, I don’t know what childbirth is like, first-hand, but I imagine in some ways, it is almost as painful. After all, in child birth a woman releases her child whom she cared for and nurtured in utero for nine months out into the world. When that same child reaches early adulthood, somewhere between sixteen and thirty, and the ersatz adult decides it’s time to fly the nest, that too is a parent releasing the child, whom he or she now cared for somewhere around two decades (which equates to approximately 25 pregnancies worth of time), out into the world. Again, it’s a birth of another magnitude, a full-blown earthquake compared to the rumblings that preceeded it, but it is painful in a wholly new way and level.
Now, I have experienced some parents – fathers, mostly – who
blustered about how when their child left home, they had new paint on the kid’s
bedroom wall before the car was even fully packed and by the time they left the
driveway, the room was well on the way to becoming a full-blown “man-cave.” I
call bullshit on such machismo. Either that, or the dad has an EQ (emotional quotient)
of a soft-boiled egg, a n over-ripe turnip, or a fencepost where birds continuously
sit and poop due to it’s proximity to the feeder. No parent can be so callous,
so undetached from their offspring as to not care that the child is leaving
home. Can they?
I experienced this for the first time when our oldest
stepped forth from the nest, flying east in 2015 to the University of Alabama. I
was not prepared for the emotional weight and heart-wrenching emotions I felt
in her senior year of high school. Several dads, like those mentioned above, “consoled”
me by berating, mocking, and gaslighting me until I felt like a total fool. (How
effective was their criticism? Even writing that sentence almost ten years
later, I feel as if I am playing the “victim” card.) After crashing and burning, and subsequently
getting professional help at the insistence of my loving wife, I finally got
myself squared away. Then, and only
then, could I appreciate the wisdom of my brother-in-law, who is one of the
smartest men I know, who said, “She is doing what you have reared her to be:
smart, strong, and independent. You have done your job. Now, enjoy watching
your work continue to grow.”
That is exactly what we have done. She graduated, got a very
good job with a good company that cares for its employees, met a faithful and
dedicated man (who is also a helpless and hopeless romantic, like her father, as
well as a hard worker) and plans to marry soon. Our middle child also is on her
own trajectory. She graduated high school the same year her sister graduated
from the university. She is now a junior at the University of Houston –
Victoria, studying business communication. While the trajectory hasn’t been as
flat or straight as her sister’s, she has overcome many personal obstacles that
her sister didn’t have to face. Again, like her sister, she is continuing to
grow into a smart, strong, and more independent woman.
Now, our youngest is graduating from high school. He turned
18 last December, making all three children adults. In February, he enlisted in
the United States Navy after determining that college wasn’t for him – at least,
not right now. A third child with yet another, third trajectory towards
adulthood. And he, too, is growing into a smarter, stronger, and more independent
young man. We will be surrendering our responsibility as parents and teachers
to his drill instructors and then the teachers at his training schools. They
will continue the process of molding and shaping him. He will – I hope – grow even
smarter and stronger, physically, mentally and emotionally. His independence
will be different than his sisters, with a great deal of emphasis placed on
inter-dependence, relying on shipmates to work together.
He ships out in four weeks and one day for boot camp. In just
twenty nine days, we’ll hug him, kiss him, and shake his hand as a boy and send
him through the doors towards manhood. He’ll go into the MEPS center to be
carried to the Great Lakes Navy Recruiting Training Command where in ten weeks,
the Navy will shape, fold, spin, and bend him to their purposes, turning a kid
into a sailor complete with Navy regulation bell bottoms (yes, they still use bell
bottoms) and the Popeye hat.
That’s what the Navy will do.
My wife and I will go home with the experience of having
just birthed our son out into the world. In many ways, it will be more painful
than the first birth. In other ways it will be easier. But it will hurt,
regardless. I’m sure we will cry as we remember his shenanigans, and we will
laugh as we think about his goofiness. Personally, as the one who has had to stick
dynamite under his pillow or hook him to a tow truck to pull him out of bed, I
will laugh every morning as oh-dark-thirty rolls around and I imagine him
having to get up the first time, get up without complaining so the DI
can hear it, get up and not use all the hot water, get up and go
to the bathroom in under two minutes and get up (GASP!) without a cell
phone.
But, then I will probably catch myself wanting to holler at
him to come out and play catch, or see what sounds good for dinner, or to help
me pick the peaches, or ask him how his day was, or just have him tell me a
story. And, in that moment, realizing he is far, far from home, I know there
will be a catch in my throat and likely a tear in my eye.
The Navy may be making him into a man, but he will always be
my son.
So, for twenty-nine more days, I still have my boy. For
twenty-nine more days, I’m going to try to prepare him as best as I can for
what is ahead. For twenty-nine more days, I’ll feed him, play catch with him, fuss
at him, hug him, and soak up as much time as I can.
For twenty-eight days, I’ll let him sleep in.
But on the twenty-ninth, I’m getting him up early so I can
have just a few more minutes before he goes.
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