I put my daughter on a jet plane headed for North Carolina, half a continent away. She looked so joyful, her auburn hair framing her delicate face, the air around her scented lightly by her perfume.
My daughter has eyes that change color with the weather and her moods. Gray- green means stormy, and deep green means peaceful but wary. As she hugged me and turned to go through airport security, I noticed that her eyes were their deepest, happiest shade of sparkling blue-green. I’d held her close as long as I could, my little girl, now 6 inches taller than I am even in her flat shoes.
I sprinted to the end of the security gate, to the window where I could wave as she rode the escalator to the airport shuttle that would take her to her flight. Ever mindful of my hovering habits, she pointed to her laptop to show that she hadn’t forgotten it.
We’d laughed together that morning when we noticed that she literally was carrying her body weight in luggage: a red roll- along that we bought on a trip to France together, her computer case, and her big brother’s blue, monogrammed bag. He’s going to college this year, and she’s graduated early and will be starting work. Both of them wanted to take time to work between high school and whatever comes next.
“Let me help you!” I said, and I grabbed up the biggest bag and carried it on my back before she could stop me. She retrieved a Smart Cart so she could do it all herself.
My daughter’s first sentence was “Me do it me self.” Now she strides, with long, graceful steps. She found her own high school, after a couple of missteps, at Front Range Academy, a school that allowed her to self-pace through the required curriculum. And she flew. Since she could focus fully on one class at a time, she could immerse herself in the kind of in-depth learning that she loves, and then move on to the next requirement. It suited her. She went to volunteer for Hurricane Katrina relief work with a high school chum, and she found that opportunity herself, too.
Only two years ago, we were at odds when she pierced her tongue and her bellybutton by herself and without my permission. I went ballistic; my baby had desecrated her own lovely body. I took her to Tribal Rites, a tattoo and piercing shop in Boulder, so they could survey the damage, on the condition that she would remove the tongue ring if it wasn’t done right. My plan backfired on me; they told her she’d done a fabulous job and might have a future in piercing. I learned tolerance.
My daughter wore dark clothing and wrote bleak poetry, and I wrung my hands in worry. I started reading all the field guides to teens, the ones with catchy titles like “I Wanna Be Sedated” and “Get Out of My Life, Mom, But First Could You Drive Me and Cheryl to the Mall?”
“You can’t run my life, Mom,” she’d say gruffly. “It’s mine, not yours.”
Generalizations didn’t work; we had to create an all-new relationship based on our own distinctively quirky personalities. She needed freedom of expression as much as I did, and she had the same problems I’ve had all my life with accepting authority. Neither of us has learned to suffer fools gladly.
My daughter always has needed freedom the way other people need oxygen: constantly, daily. When I made choices for her, she sabotaged them. When she made choices for herself, she worked with diligence and vigor. No boundary went unchallenged, so I tried to be creative. I let her write graffiti all over her basement walls, and I let her stay out late as long as she let me know where she was and how to reach her.
Her high school graduation will be in late June. She only wears silver, never gold, so my gift will be a silver pendant. On the back will be engraved these words: Me Do It Me Self.
It hasn’t been easy to raise her, because she won’t conform to other people’s expectations, but left to her own devices, she creates extraordinary work all her own. “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he marches to the beat of a different drummer,” wrote Henry David Thoreau. “He must keep pace to the music that he hears, however measured or far away.”
My daughter doesn’t march; she glides and dances. Far off, I felt the drumbeats – hers and mine – different from each other, and different from the conforming majority, but our drumbeats, fast together, in harmony and keeping time. For the past two decades, I’ve based all my decisions on my children’s needs. There in the airport, as my youngest child disappeared from view, I realized that I’d never felt so alone in all my life.
“Me do it me self,” I whispered softly as I walked back to my car.
I’d like to put a big blanket of protection around my children, keeping them safe from harm, but my son told me that he deserves the right to experience his own pain and his own life lessons. My daughter’s ferocious independence freed him from trying to please others all the time, he said. As I leaned against my car and wept, I realized that her aggressive need for autonomy had freed me.
Kiesa Kay (kiesa@oleandercottage.com) recently founded Oleander Cottage, a writing retreat in the south of France, and has edited two educational anthologies.
