AJ Alanson, Author

A treat from my writing partner. Enjoy!

On Almost Adults – by Chris Chiller

On Wednesday, we dropped our daughter off for an overnight freshman orientation. She was one of several hundred incoming 17 and 18-year-olds. They were housed in a dormitory with a circular drive near the entrance. We stopped behind three other cars, and all of us opened our back hatches to fetch luggage for the overnighters like a row of untrained chorus dancers trying their best. Proud moms and dads looked intently at their suddenly collegiate children, wondering how it all happened so fast. We watched as the couple in front of us gave some last-minute remarks. Encouragement? Instruction? It didn’t look like a threat.

Dad broke first and headed for the driver’s seat with a sort of slump that denoted not anger or defeat, but both irrevocable loss and sweet relief. Mom brushed something off her son’s shoulder, and he turned to go into the dorm—into his future—without looking back. Mom watched him go, uncertainly rubbing her hands, before turning to get into the car. As they let him go, they both looked so proud and yet so sad. I understood fully.

We had all those feelings a little less than a year ago when we took our daughter to the airport to fly to Germany for ten months on an academic exchange program. She was annoyed by the attention and our emotions. She also walked away without looking back. She was as brave as could be, and we were proud of her. That girl is as gone as the ripples in yesterday’s river. She has walked her own path into adulthood and returned to us new—still with much to learn, but an adult nonetheless.

Our daughter was slightly different at the university drop-off. She didn’t bristle as we pulled out her bags and she gave us each a hug but she didn’t look back all the same. She had already decided how to act like the adult she must become. 

Most of us avoid thinking about our own transition because we know it was awkward and embarrassing. I remember my own departure from childhood. I couldn’t wait to cross each successive mark and thought nothing of how my independence might cause pain to my parents, no matter how proud they said they were. What the child leaving cannot know as they walk toward their beginning is that we are watching an ending—a sunset. It might be beautiful or tempestuous but it is the end. 

The new adults in our families have little nostalgia for their growing-up years. We retain the memories, sharper and more present than they are for the person who must break free from their childhood identity.

What we see when we wave goodbye to the back of their heads is the sum of all their years with us. We see them at every age and remember every brilliantly sweet moment they have long forgotten. We remember the infuriating moments as well, as they began to slough off the chrysalis of childhood in favor of a personhood whose definition does not involve us. We anticipate that the young adult returning will see us in a new light while we struggle to see them and ourselves in our new roles. 

If you have more than one child, then your identity as parent has been with you for more than 18 years. You may have had many more years of responsibility for young lives. The most bittersweet goodbye is when it is your last child. You are not just done parenting this child; your long-lasting identity as Mom or Dad is changing. Not that your relationships must be entirely severed, but your reign over your family as the most benign of dictators has forever ended. You are allowed to fume and fret, offer unasked-for advice, or listen to angsty stories that seem to map a little too precisely onto your own young adulthood memories. This is the time you must reinvent who you see when you tell yourself who you are.

Your memories of how to parent will push you to overreach. Don’t. Now is when you can begin to learn how to be friends with a young adult. Listen quietly and don’t solve. They don’t need fixing—not from you.

Enough pontificating. I know how you feel, and I am proud of you for raising someone who is able to walk into their future and not look back. You did it. You won.