Heidi Stevens: After a child leaves the nest, you get the privilege of parenting the new version of them

Chicago Tribune

2 days ago

My friend Jason is getting ready to drop off his daughter, his firstborn child, at college. And by 'getting ready,' I mean crying himself to sleep at night and asking strangers what to do.
Normal. If there's another way to do it, I certainly don't know it.
'I feel like the dad in 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding,'' he texted me the other day. 'WHY YOU WANT TO LEAVE ME?!?!?!?'
Even though, of course, he wants her to leave him. Even though, of course, he wants her to want to leave him.
'It's an odd feeling when your heart is simultaneously swelling with pride,' he texted, 'and also being ripped out of your chest.'
I call that feeling parenting.
You meet your child for the first time and suddenly the world is absolutely beautiful and mind-blowing and magical and your heart is exploding with love and gratitude and awe. And also, at the exact same moment, your heart is breaking in half because one day, lots of days, actually, your child is going to go out and enjoy that absolutely beautiful, mind-blowing, magical world. Without you.
What a terrible system. Who thought of this?
'Several people have told us, 'You're not supposed to let her see you cry. Don't cry until after you leave,'' Jason texted.
Nonsense, I texted back. Cry your eyes out in front of her if you want to. It's OK to let her see that your world changed forever the day she was born and your world changed forever the day she went to kindergarten and camp and prom and that one party but all those times she came back to you. And this time she won't. At least not for a while.
'I've told her already that no matter how much of an idiot I make of myself,' Jason texted, 'she has to know how proud I am of her and how excited I am for her.'
She will. She does.
Last year, I wrote a column full of wisdom for launching your kid after high school, collected from readers who had already done so. Chicagoan Allison Clark offered a story about her own experience being dropped off at college:
'My parents unloaded my stuff into my dorm room and then my dad basically hugged me, said goodbye and abruptly left to head back to the car,' Clark wrote. 'My mother stayed a little bit longer and then left as well.
'Months later,' she continued, 'I told my mom that I was a little hurt that my dad left so quickly when they dropped me off. 'Oh, Allison,' my mom said. 'Your dad was about to cry, and he didn't want to cry in front of you. He was very proud about not ever being seen crying.''
Ah.
'I will forever be grateful that she shared that insight with me,' Clark wrote. 'Because it both corrected my memory of what had happened and made me feel so much more understanding of his experience as a parent. It also meant that when I dropped my own child off in that same freshman dorm 34 years later, I made sure to both linger and openly cry before I left.'
Two months after I wrote that column, I dropped my daughter at college for the first time.
I didn't cry when we pulled up to her dorm. I didn't cry as I unpacked her clothes and folded them into little piles to line her dorm room dresser drawers and had flashbacks of folding her onesies into little piles to line her nursery dresser drawers.
I didn't cry when we went to get our nails done together one last time before the old chapter officially ended and the new chapter officially began. I didn't cry when we walked to get iced coffees and I pictured all the times she'd go to that coffee shop and place that coffee order and I wouldn't even know she was there unless she used my PayPal account, which, in the end, happened most of the time.
I didn't even cry when I hugged her goodbye.
I did cry when I was all alone on the drive home and Luke Combs came on my radio. Mostly because she and I spent part of the drive on the way to college (and the years leading up to that drive to college) singing his songs together at the top of our lungs.
But the timing of the tears had nothing to do with hiding what I was feeling from her. The tears came — and come — when they decide to.
In a few days I'll drop her at college for the second time. I don't know if it will feel harder or easier. I've heard both. And I don't have a lot of wisdom to share with Jason or any of my other friends who are doing it for the first time, except this one thing.
A few weeks ago, my daughter and I stood side by side singing Luke Combs together at the top of our lungs in Grant Park, where he was performing at Lollapalooza. And that was a moment when the world felt absolutely beautiful and mind-blowing and magical and my heart was exploding with love and gratitude and awe.
And also, at the exact same moment, my heart started healing in some of the cracked places.
Because I realized that after they go out and enjoy that absolutely beautiful, mind-blowing, magical world without us, they come back different. Smarter, probably. Stronger, hopefully.
And we get to fall in love with the new them. Over and over again.