Legally I suppose my job as parent has ended but it hasn’t, now the hard part for me is to find a way to somehow be the parent of an adult child. The word child in the sense that she is my daughter and not a minor, I suppose my adult daughter is a better way to explain her role in my life now.
It is hard to put that into perspective because I remember her birth, clearly as if it were yesterday and feeling the sudden rush of emotion for this person who was seconds old and now today as we sat across from one another over lunch and our conversations is a young woman.
She is still that five year old in cowboy boots and long as can be blonde hair and a personality the overflowed
She is the middle school kid with blue hair, then pink, then two-toned and red, and the back to blonde and others as well.
She is also the not quite two year old on cross country skis, skiing up hill away from me on my alpine skis having to skate up hill after this little tyke. Yes she was skiing a few weeks before her second birthday.
As in any relationship there are words which are filled with love, and those we wish were never said. Days when we got along perfectly and then those too were it’s hard to find a way to be in the same room. They go both ways and one could spend all their time trying to analyzing what could have been done or should have been done.
I do worry now, as mush as I did that first hour as a parent on day one of the best part of my life. My daughter… means the world too me as does my son but today is her day.
When she was about seven months old I sat down one day and wrote her a letter. Trying then as the brand new dad with my brand new child to see what the future might hold and how I felt then 18 years ago. I then sealed up the letter put it in a safe place and kept it there for 17 and 6 months. I got it out of it‘s place of safe keeping and put it a new place and said to myself then you‘ll forget where you‘ve put this if you change it‘s place. So I did. I spent the morning looking for it without success.
So I went to lunch with my daughter and we had a good time. Talking about how things are going and what her plans are for this and that part of her life. I’m trying on this new role in my relationship her. Her life has always been her life to live and I’ve tried to be the a guiding parent rather then a tell you what to do because I said so parent. I’ve tried to listen openly to her words and reply with respect. I’ve failed at times. I’ve succeeded at others. Ultimately she is a very responsible young woman. Mistakes have been made of course but who has the perfect life. I’ve seen her make the tough choices her friends didn’t make.
There are things that I wish were different in our relationship but I keep my heart and arms open for her. While she is my adult daughter, she is still my daughter and any home I have is still hers.
Our lunch went on and our conversation was good and I am as proud of my daughter as any parent can be, she is a beautiful, intelligent, funny, witty, charming, mostly independent and a ton of other things wound up into this wonderful person that is always in my thoughts.
The lunch ended with her gifts from me and a ride back to her mother’s house. I came back to my home and searched again for the letter. Which I found finally.
I called her and let her know that I had found the letter. I told her I had planned on giving it to her at lunch and explained how I made sure I knew where it was and then changed it’s keeping place and forgot where I had put it.
So I drove back over to her mother’s house. We sat in my car as she read the four page letter on about 4” x 7” pages. The content is for her, words from her brand new dad to his now adult daughter. I signed the end with the nick name from when she was little, which was a nice distraction and probably a good thing that I had misplaced the letter and not had it in the restaurant because we were both in happy tears by the end of the letter. We hugged and told each other we loved one another and I wished her happy birthday again and hoped that she had fun with her friends later.
Doodle is 18, that is such a big thing in my head right now, but I’m proud of her and happy that I have a great daughter.
In other news…
I love my son too and he is great as well.
That’s all for now other stuff tomorrow, have a great day and play nice in the neighborhood.
Ciao,
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