she's leaving home

my daughter is moving across the country and i have thoughts

My daughter is moving to California. She is going right after Christmas, which leaves me less than three months with her. She’s 32 years old; I’ve had her a long time. It’s time to let other people, other places see the wonder of Natalie.

At least that’s what I’m telling myself. Part of me is devastated. I’m losing not just my daughter, but her companionship. I’m losing my concert buddy, I’m losing the talks on the couch, I’m losing someone who manages to take care of me emotionally, who guides me and also trusts me with her own emotional needs.

I know, I know, she’s an adult, she’s a grown woman. Let her go. But it’s hard. Even though she is living her dream of moving to a state she loves so much - and I am so happy for her for that - I’m being a little selfish here. My daughter is my touchstone, she is who I turn to when I need to talk. She grounds me in a way no therapist has managed to do. And while we can still have those talks on the phone or Zoom or FaceTime, there’s something comforting about having her here with me.

I wrote about her when she turned 31:

Then she’s in high school and she’s taking sign language classes and is elected historian for the drama the club and develops her love of photography. She struggles with schoolwork, she is diagnosed with OCD, she works her ass off and perseveres. There are little things, tiny moments that tear at the rope that binds us, signs that I need to let go. It’s ninth grade and I’m dropping her off at Warped Tour, sure that she is going to die of heatstroke while she’s there. She doesn’t. I let her go to parties, sure that she is going to meet up with a bad crowd and come home drunk or stoned. She doesn’t. I stop hovering over her while she does homework and projects because I was told to let her sink or swim on her own, it’s the only way to prepare her for the world. I’m sure it’s going to backfire. It doesn’t. It’s June, 2008 and she’s graduating high school and I’m feeling everything all at once. Pride, sadness, hope, fear.

She goes to the local community college. She does an internship at Disney World, where she gets to dress as Mickey and brighten the lives of little kids. She comes home from Florida and seems so much older than when she left. She’s finding herself, finding her way. The years pass. Time zooms by. She’s 20, 23, 25. She’s honing her photography skills. She becomes a yogi. She is spiritual in a holistic way. My parents call her a hippie. Her license plate reads PCE LVE. I am in awe of the way she navigates life, the way she navigates herself. She is grounded, she is confident. It is 2013 and she is a woman.

I don’t know where the rest of the years went. She lives with my sister for a while. She lives with her father. She moves back in with me and we seem to get in each other’s way all the time, which puts us on edge. She moves out and our relationship gets back on track. We go to concerts together. We get together just to talk. Her photography business is taking off; she has an amazing eye and people are recognizing that. She travels to Iceland by herself, up the coast of California by herself. She does things I can’t imagine doing. Despite inheriting my anxiety and depression, she has managed to grip life by the horns, she has been able to overcome and adapt and know she is capable of so much more than being grounded by her mental illnesses. I envy her. I am incredibly proud of who my daughter is and what she’s made of herself and her life. She overcame learning disabilities, some bad parenting on my part, the trauma of divorce and a broken home. She didn’t listen to people who told her not to follow her dreams. She followed them, caught up to them, and is living within them now.

She’s started packing up and sorting through things, selling some stuff she doesn’t want to take with her, streamlining her belongings. She’s driving so she can only take so much. This isn’t the first time she’s driving across the country. It won’t be the last. I’ll worry the whole time, because that’s what I do. I don’t care how old she is or that she is an adult; part of parenting is never letting go of concern and I will track her as she moves across the country.

She has friends where she’s going, people to move in with. She won’t be alone and she won’t be lonely. She’ll never get homesick because to her, California is home. It’s been calling her since she was a teenager, begging her to come make her home there. Who am I to begrudge her that? Not that I could. You just can’t ground a 32 year old woman.

It still feels odd for me to call her a woman. She is still that girl who loved Power Rangers and pop punk. She is still the girl who cried for days when she lost her stuffed bunny. It all makes me think of her still as the girl who needed me, who came to me for band-aids, who crawled into my bed when she had nightmares. But she’s not. She is now the girl who is going to live out a dream. She is now the girl who doesn’t need me as much and while I’ve come to terms with that in the past ten years or so, it’s just made harder while watching her get ready to move across the country.

I’m sure I will be making a lot of FaceTime calls, looking for her to talk me down from the ledge when I’m about to text my ex or back out of something. She has become my confidant and I’m thankful for technology that she doesn’t have to be sitting in my living room with me to maintain that part of our relationship. I’ll call and text often just to make sure she’s ok, because that’s what parents do.

I wish for her all the things I’ve wished her whole life - success and good health and love and friendship. I’ve watched her enjoy all of this, and now I will watch her grow even more from afar. And that’s okay. You have to let go at some point and I’ve held on for way too long now. I’ll miss going to concerts with her. I’ll miss our talks. I’ll miss watching Islanders games with her. I’ll miss her very presence. But I will watch her pull away from our home with a good amount of pride. She is making what she wants out of her life. She’s taking risks and chasing her dreams. Here’s hoping California is her dream come true.