We listen to a book on tape for a few hours, until our brains need a rest, then take turns queuing up songs on Spotify. I bring my old school favorites—Tom Petty, acoustic Eric Clapton, The Innocence Mission—and she slips in a few of our more recent obsessions, musicians like Jason Isbell and Amos Lee and WILLIS. We sing together as the miles whir beneath us, miles and miles and miles from home.
It is difficult to fathom that she is nearly 18, nine months away from leaving for college. Goodness, her brother is already at that place in life, and if she does choose school, we will have two fewer kids in the house next fall. I clear my throat and try not to think about it.
But she is grown now, or mostly, a fact emphasized by the fact that she drives for a long stretch of the trip so that I can sleep in the passenger side. I wake up and glance over at her. When did this happen, that she could drive on the highway while I sleep?
We arrive at the hotel around 7 p.m. and then head out to meet up with her friend for dinner. It is a bustling suburb of Nashville, a warm night, and the outside tables are packed with college kids and young adults and wealthy suburbanites laughing and drinking wine. The air is still and I mostly listen as the two of them talk about college and the future. We drop her friend off at her dorm with hugs and farewells and we’ll see you tomorrow.
At various and random points on the trip I can feel a subtle tearing away. Or perhaps the premonition of the tearing away, the initial tug, the anticipation of a pain that is still some time coming.
Day Two is a whirlwind of tours and meetings and lunch and more buildings and the art department and me envisioning her walking campus alone next year, from one place to the next, living a life almost wholly hers.
She spends the night with her friend and I drive slowly back to the hotel, grab some food to eat in the room, watch a movie, write in my journal. I sit in the bed, my back against the headboard, the other bed empty.
I remember, barely on the edge of my memory, a trip my father and I took to the University of Chicago when I was a senior back in 1995, nearly 28 years ago. I remember spending time on campus while my own dad stayed back at the hotel, and now I know how he felt.
This is one of the predominant thoughts that runs through my head these days: “Oh. That must be how my dad felt that day . . .”
I fall asleep late, hoping she is okay.
The morning is gray and rainy and I eat in the hotel’s breakfast area, then pack up and drive to meet her at the university. The trees are glorious autumn, and golden leaves fall with the rain, and I run into the coffee shop, my shoulders up, my hands in my pockets. She is eating with her friend in the back corner, so I get a drink and sit by the window, looking out at the cars and people who hurry past.
Soon enough we are saying goodbye to her friend and we are on the road home again. She talks and talks for the first hour, the first two hours, and I could listen to her for the whole trip. We consider her future, consider her passions, consider what a wonderful life it could be ahead of her. I do not want to think of the heartache she will surely experience—this life is too full of that—so I ground myself in that moment. Hope. Possibility. Freedom.
We arrive home in the dark of night. Arrive home. In the dark. She retreats to her room and I go over the trip with Maile in bed and we dream on our daughter’s behalf. This is what parents do. They envision a life for their child that is better than their own, even though it must involve a tearing away. Even when the very thing the child needs is the thing that will leave us with an unfillable space.
This is life. This is happiness.
NEW PODCAST EPISODE! We couldn't wait to talk with Sean Dietrich about his new book, You Are My Sunshine, but let's be honest, what we really couldn't wait for was having his wife Jamie on the podcast. She claims she's never been on a podcast with Sean before, so I guess that makes us ground-breaking? Move over Diane Sawyer--The Stories Between Us is where you can find the never-before-heard debut interview with Jamie Dietrich. And she spills all the goods on Sean, including the fact that he never knows the terms of his writing contracts (only she does) and her tactics to get him writing again if he's falling behind. YOU CAN LISTEN HERE.
Oh I felt this. I, too, know this unfillable space.
When I dropped my oldest off at college this past August, on the drive home, I texted my dad a message of only four words, while tearing up...
“Now I get it.”
You’re in the thick of it. Make sure to let them go so they want to come back.