Off to the East

My daughter is heading off to college today. It is roughly a 4 hour drive to the east. A friend has graciously agreed to drive us. We will spend the night in a hotel that my employers paid for, as a gift to me in appreciation for all my hard work for them this summer. And then tomorrow, between the hours of 1 and 2, we will move my daughter in to this new phase of her life.

I have had many thoughts and emotions about this, not surprisingly, what with my only child going off to school. Part of my mind is awhirl in the sense of how fast time has gone by, when in fact, the years passed as years will and were not sped up by some magic or technological process. It goes fast, and yet, we lived every minute of it.

I can easily say I never expected to raise a child alone, and I can also easily say I did not expect to help her reach for and achieve her life goals alone either. I had thought her Fuckhead Father (FF) would have done the right thing and helped with her expenses. But no. His selfishness has reached a new peak, and I am not wasting any more thought or space on that pathetic fact.

We haven't had an easy summer of it, her and I. Like with most things in her life, what people told me I could expect simply did not happen. When she was a baby and we lived on the farm with FF, people told me how wonderful it is she can grow up in such a delightful place, surrounded by trees and fields and nature. As it turned out, she doesn't actually like being outside all that much, and prefers urban stimulation to nature's sights, sounds, and scents. This summer people told me how wonderful it will be to do things with her and make memories with her, but it turned out she was, for the most part, surly and uncommunicative and largely ungrateful. I am sure it was her way of distancing herself from me, as I have also in my own ways begun to distance myself from her.

She has had her own small freak-outs. She isn't one to talk about her emotions much, but she has changed the color of her hair 3 times in the span of a month.

Last night she came home from a concert, her last outing with a high school friend -- the only high school friend left in town as her college starts even later than my daughter's -- and she began to panic, saying she could not believe it was time to leave already and she is not ready and she has so much to do and blah blah. I told her she had plenty of time, and once she gets there, she and all the other people on her floor, and in her suite, will all be in the same boat. I think she will be fine. I think she is coming into herself. I think this college will provide her with the best opportunity she could hope for, and I think the place is a good fit. We have all day today to get there, to sleep over, and to finally move in early tomorrow afternoon.

When I got up this morning, all her stuff is packed, ready, and assembled here in the livingroom, needing only to be put in the back of our friend's car.

It is my wish that my daughter grows into her beautiful, regal, swan self, and that she begins to trust herself and have confidence in her abilities. She is beautiful; she is intelligent; she is talented-- and hopefully one day, awareness of all those gifts will awaken in her.

I am grateful to have been blessed all these years with as gentle and dignified a spirit as hers to nurture and care for. She has always seemed older than her years to me, even as a baby. I would hold her in my arms and look into her wise, old eyes and have to consciously remind myself that even though I perceive an old, old soul in her, her tiny body is but a few months old. It has always been that way -- me needing to remind myself that even though I see the elder spirit in her, to herself she is what she is, the present chronological age she knows herself to be.

As for me, I am letting her go into the east, the place of the rising sun, of the gift of light, of the dawning of consciousness. And, I will look to the east every morning, after I climb this hill with my dogs, and I will send wishes for peace and contentment, prayers of love and protection her way. The wind will carry them, I trust, and wrap them safely around her.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

photo: Winter Sunrise, courtesy of freefoto.com