My daughter and I were talking a few months ago. About her future, what she wants in this life. What she would like to do when she is an adult and flies the coop. After some back and forth, she looked at me and says with an absolute straight face...”I think, I would like to be a stay at home daughter...”
I laughed out loud, hard.
But she was only partially kidding. I think she means it. Not like forever, but at least for a decade past 18. And I get it, for her. Me, I wanted to move out at 10. I wanted to make the money, earn the career and finances that went with it. I wanted to be on my own from almost birth. But that is not today’s kids. We have created a world for them that is hard to leave. We have all the nice things, all the accoutrements of good living. And for them to move out and start there is impossible. Even with our continued assistance. The only way they get to live as they have been raised, is to stay here with us for longer...maybe forever.
And while this notion sits wrong with me on a variety of levels, I am not sure exactly why. I mean it does fly in the face of everything I was raised with and the culture in which I was raised. But it is a new era. It is not 1987. It is 2024. And the world is different. And for the most part, I don’t like most of the “progress” we have made.
I think going back in time to where you and your family lived on a piece of land, depended on each other and spent your life loving and being with the people you love isn’t such a bad thing. To some degree, this is what we are doing here in Ojai. I live a mile from my parents and we are intimately tied to each other’s every day living.
If they would allow it, I would move us all off onto 40 acres in a redwood forest to farm the land, eat quiet meals together and play games by the fireside each evening. We would take long walks in the woods and help each other in all the ways. That is a great life to me. I would also be happy living on 40 acres all by myself...some dreams never really die.
What struck me about my daughter’s comment, besides being hilarious, was that it was about the best compliment I could have ever received. I have done such a good job raising her, that she doesn’t want to leave. That she is content living here with me, this life we share. And that is heartening in a world today where it seems heartlessness has won out, repeatedly.
Family is this idea I have always struggled with. I wanted to be part of a large one. Lots of people always coming and going and all the drama that came with it. But I don’t think that is really what I wanted. I like the idea of it but living with it, there would be too much and it would overwhelm me. I would feel lost in the shuffle and the personalities...because that is how I have always felt in social circles. Lost. Like my mixing with others takes something away from me...like I am lost to myself once others are added to the mix.
I also see the down side of my daughter’s comment and aspiration. She is afraid to launch. Doubting her own abilities to provide a life for herself. She also isn’t a huge fan of working so that is also a reason she would just be content to stay with me and allow me to continue to foot the bills.
Her comment is an indictment of her generation and perhaps maybe a statement of hope. That we have done a good enough job raising our kids that this long lost familial idea of living on shared land, space and effort might be rekindled. This whole concept of family as community might change into something greater and better than before.
Maybe I am dreaming. The whole reason family fell apart like that to begin with was due to abuse, poverty and addiction. Homes became prison like in their lock down on all the dysfunction. People were held hostage in what were supposed to be loving families. And so they escaped to cities and larger towns where they could blend in to escape the family that left them less capable of living any kind of life and provided new and fucked up ways to not deal with the trauma of their family life.
For now, I am content living a mile from my parents. I think I want to move away, still. But not really. I would miss them and I would miss my kids. We have reconfigured this idea of family many times over and seem to be at a place today where we are not only making it work, but enjoying life, together.
Like most things in life, my daughter’s comment was both sad and wonderful. Sad that she sees no better future for herself than the one I could provide and wonderful that I have provided her a life that she is so content and happy living.
We spent all day at her horse show yesterday. A place where her competence, grace, happiness and esteem runs at an all time high. I am her groom. I get the things, and run here and there and she is the star. She is in charge and I just follow orders. It is a nice role reversal actually. And together we were there, with this magical horse named Odin, and all the wonderfully weird horse people who share this same passion. Each girl and her family there supporting her efforts to ride these wild beasts, bending them to their will, while granting the animals the ultimate acknowledgment that they could kill us dead any moment they choose.
And I got to watch as my daughter, this daughter whose best aspiration in this life currently is to be a stay at home daughter, ride her best ride and win the whole derby. She and Odin, with a lot of help from her horse community family. They did it. And it was amazing and wonderful and I was honored to be a part of it all. Thank you to Keeley and Mario for helping us find a home in this horse family. I still not sure where I fit in, or if I ever will but I feel welcome nonetheless.
And while the idea of my daughter living with me forever appeals to me on some level...I won’t let her. We do not live in the old west, we live in a time where she must venture out and live HER life. Away from me, and my support and my demands. She has to spread her wings and fly to her future, not mine. And while I will always be there to support, guide and love, her life is not mine to direct, control or really even comment upon. If I have done my job well as mother, she knows who she is, what her strengths are, what she can accomplish and what she needs to work on.
As she begins her final year of high school in a couple of weeks, I turn over a little bit more of her life to her. I take a few more steps back into the foreground. I watch, and wait and listen for the times she needs me to move forward and gain more time to figure out who I am now that all this intensive mothering is almost done. It is never over, ever. But I have to step back, and away, because to me, the worst sin a parent can ever commit is to give too much or too little. We never get it right, but at least, we should always be asking the question. And then adjusting our behavior accordingly.
We know when they need support. We know when they need to fall flat. We know, because despite the change in time and decades, growing up is all the same wherever you are. It is the clash of the idea that you are competent and the reality that you aren’t as competent as you thought you were. And in the gap between the two, we sit poised, much like I did yesterday, watching and waiting for the moment to come. Sometimes we sit cheering on from the sidelines, and other times, we must rush in with aid, assistance and love.
Yesterday I got to watch this kid of mine shine her competence all over the place. She was in her element and such an example of grace under fire. She and Odin rode in harmony and partnership, each with love and respect for the other. Making a combination partnership that was capable of taking home a blue ribbon. A silly piece of blue fabric, but what it represented was oh so much more!
Demonstrating to me once more, that I have no idea what is going to happen in this life. Mine or hers. But if I show up, for mothering, for daughtering, for my life, I am richly rewarded.
Again...still!
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