The bedroom door was locked. I didn’t want her to see me cry. “Dad, we have to go,” she said, while knocking continuously on the door.
Go where? It wasn’t possible. My little girl was going off to college. It was supposed to be a passage. It was alleged to be the natural order of things.
It wasn’t. Not for me.
I had spent the last 18 years repeating the same mantra to her. “You can’t live here forever. Our job is to get you out of the house and into your own life. Your job is to get yourself on your own.”
So why, now, did I not only disbelieve that parental mission, but disagreed with it. This was my baby, my first child. My Casey.
“Dad, we have to go,” she repeated.
Northeastern University, only a little more than an hour away, was the destination. It might as well have been India.
I know. I have to unlock the door, both physically and metaphorically, to our daughter’s future.
I will, I did. I must.
So, we got in the car and, with her mother, drove to Boston, all the while me revisiting, in my mind, the day she came home from high school with a form for me to sign giving permission for her to take driver’s ed classes.
“Why do you need to drive,” I asked with actual seriousness. “I can take you anywhere you need to go.”
“Dad, please just sign the form,” she implored.
Hypocrite. Me. The hypocrite. The blind man. I didn’t see it coming, this wave of saying one thing, getting exactly what I wanted, but not knowing I don’t want it at all.
She’s leaving.
***
We get to Boston, finally. The car is unloaded with all measure of things that she is taking with her.
The one thing she isn’t taking is me. Her father.
It’s time to say goodbye. We do, me reluctantly.
This time there’s no door, so I find a tree on campus to duck behind and hide the tears.
We left.
I had one of the first “mobile,” as they used to call them, phones.
I called the payphone (I had made sure I had the number before leaving) in the dorm’s hallway and asked for Casey.
She finally, after what seemed an eternity, came to the phone.
“Are you okay,” I asked.
“Dad, you and mom only left five minutes ago,” was the response.
My heart fell.
Five minutes for her was eighteen years to me. Where did it go?
Years later, I heard a song by Trace Adkins, “You’re Gonna Miss This,” about those years that went by in a flash.
As a parent, the trials and challenges of infancy, adolescence, and young adulthood seem like they never will end.
They do.
They have.
You’re gonna miss this.
I did.
I still do.
You will, too.