Kami leaves tomorrow again for college...
I have an eerily similar feeling as last year. Excited for her and yet still nursing a feeling of sorrow...a certain sorrow that mourns the passage of time.
She begins her Sophomore year at IWU next week and tomorrow we're packing up all her stuff and helping her move into her new dorm. She has shared her mixed emotions and we have shared ours, so it's not like we bottle it up, but still.
I just have a hard time letting go of days gone by. In fact, I spent a little time this morning reading some blogs from when my daughters were just little girls. This probably was the stupidest thing I could have done, but I'm a sucker for the sentimental. I can't tell you why, but I love to feel things deeply, even if those things are difficult and even sad. I want to appreciate the movements of life, the transitions, the rights of passage, each and every noteworthy fork in the road, the mile-markers that speak of what's being left behind and what's dancing in the distance. I like to sit and dwell in the feelings of those shifts. As one of my friends used to say, "Shift happens". Yes, it does.
Kami has had an eventful summer at home. She worked her first full time job as a nanny as well as a second job at the local golf course. On the side she picked up some photography gigs as well, so she learned the honest toil of work, both the restriction of it as well as the reward. Growing up is the loss of freedom, not the other way around. Responsibility has a way of forcing you to do things you wouldn't do otherwise, and to live a life of good duty. It's not all about desire and delight...there is duty and discipline, and she spent 4 months learning the grind and glory of hard work.
She also had a pretty close call mid-summer when she got in a car accident. I remember her trembling voice on the phone as she told me where she was and what happened. My heart raced as I collected details really caring only about the answer to one question: "Are you ok?" It was about a mile from our house and I pressed the accelerator to the floorboard pretty much the whole way there. The car was totaled and it began a domino effect of car troubles with our fleet of four cars that was every bit like playing a game of Russian Roulette. We didn't know which care would break down when, but each of our cars found their way to the mechanic this summer as we shuffled our schedules and tried to make transportation happen for 4 people going different directions. With the help of borrowed cars and rented cars, we somehow made it through.
Probably the most unexpected aspect of the summer was a surgery that Kami had on her nose that we thought would be no big deal. The first time she went under the knife, we though that would take care of this cyst that had been growing slowly for a few months. Little did we know that as they did testing, they would discover that it was going to grow back if they didn't go deeper and wider to get every shred of it out. Again, I thought it was a matter of making a small incision, removing the suspicious tissue, and putting a few stitches in it to close it up. I remember sitting in the waiting room with her and them calling her back twice to take a little more out, my stomach was starting to knot up as I began to realize that this was a bigger deal than I thought. Finally the doctors said I could go back since she had gotten her stitches. I walked into the room where she was laying flat on her back and I could see tears streaming down her face. I saw the scar and realized very quickly that something very invasive had occurred and that this little cyst was so much more underneath. They ended up pulling skin from her cheek as pseudo-skin graphs to fill in the nickel-sized hole in her nose and the scar went pretty much the length of her whole nose from her tear duct to her left nostril in a zig zag formation that looked like Harry Potter's forehead scar. I held her hand, asked questions calmly, and tried to bring strength even though, in truth, I was on the brink of fainting. In fact, I had to slowly make my way around to some chairs along the wall to avoid collapsing in a heap of flesh on the ground. The whole scene was surreal and not even close to how I was anticipating the day going. There were some frustrations, some intense conversations, some crying and some anger, but it was amazing to see my eldest bounce back even by the end of the day. I think if it was anyone else in our family, they would have been clotheslined and sidelined for quite some time, but she has faced no less that a few physical setbacks in her lifetime and her resilience is otherworldly. I'm not minimizing the way this rocked her world and still affects it even as the scar heals, but she has been an overcomer.
I could go into more detail about more details, but those are some of the moments that stand out as highlights/lowlights of her short summer vacation before heading back for her 2nd year of college.
I guess what I want to say that as her father I feel so conflicted. The feeling hasn't gone away even as I think about comparing this year to last. I don't want her to leave because I just like having my kids under my roof and under the care of my wife and I as well as her defender-sisters. I struggle moving on into this next season that feels like life is getting away from me. Next year it will be Aly and so on and so forth. It just gets more frayed and I get more afraid. Not the kind of fear that wonders if they are going to do everything right, but the kind of fear that is simply wonders if they are alright. When they are home, you can monitor that so much easier. All that to say, I just like having my family home, safe and secure under my watchful eye. It's not like I'm looking over their shoulder when they're here, or that I even see them all that much, what with all their friends, activities, work, and interests...but they come home each night, and the comfort of that can't be overstated.
I will miss my Kami Rose when we drop her off...more this year than last, cause there's more story to miss, more events that entangle our hearts and braid them together in shared memory. There will aways be 'more to miss'...I guess I didn't realize that. There certainly is something natural about them leaving the nest and learning to fly, but I don't have to like it.
And yet, like it or not, here it comes. This weekend will begin another chapter in the Holdridge story and I have great hope that every chapter will be even better than the one before. I love her with every fiber of my being.
She begins her Sophomore year at IWU next week and tomorrow we're packing up all her stuff and helping her move into her new dorm. She has shared her mixed emotions and we have shared ours, so it's not like we bottle it up, but still.
I just have a hard time letting go of days gone by. In fact, I spent a little time this morning reading some blogs from when my daughters were just little girls. This probably was the stupidest thing I could have done, but I'm a sucker for the sentimental. I can't tell you why, but I love to feel things deeply, even if those things are difficult and even sad. I want to appreciate the movements of life, the transitions, the rights of passage, each and every noteworthy fork in the road, the mile-markers that speak of what's being left behind and what's dancing in the distance. I like to sit and dwell in the feelings of those shifts. As one of my friends used to say, "Shift happens". Yes, it does.
Kami has had an eventful summer at home. She worked her first full time job as a nanny as well as a second job at the local golf course. On the side she picked up some photography gigs as well, so she learned the honest toil of work, both the restriction of it as well as the reward. Growing up is the loss of freedom, not the other way around. Responsibility has a way of forcing you to do things you wouldn't do otherwise, and to live a life of good duty. It's not all about desire and delight...there is duty and discipline, and she spent 4 months learning the grind and glory of hard work.
She also had a pretty close call mid-summer when she got in a car accident. I remember her trembling voice on the phone as she told me where she was and what happened. My heart raced as I collected details really caring only about the answer to one question: "Are you ok?" It was about a mile from our house and I pressed the accelerator to the floorboard pretty much the whole way there. The car was totaled and it began a domino effect of car troubles with our fleet of four cars that was every bit like playing a game of Russian Roulette. We didn't know which care would break down when, but each of our cars found their way to the mechanic this summer as we shuffled our schedules and tried to make transportation happen for 4 people going different directions. With the help of borrowed cars and rented cars, we somehow made it through.
Probably the most unexpected aspect of the summer was a surgery that Kami had on her nose that we thought would be no big deal. The first time she went under the knife, we though that would take care of this cyst that had been growing slowly for a few months. Little did we know that as they did testing, they would discover that it was going to grow back if they didn't go deeper and wider to get every shred of it out. Again, I thought it was a matter of making a small incision, removing the suspicious tissue, and putting a few stitches in it to close it up. I remember sitting in the waiting room with her and them calling her back twice to take a little more out, my stomach was starting to knot up as I began to realize that this was a bigger deal than I thought. Finally the doctors said I could go back since she had gotten her stitches. I walked into the room where she was laying flat on her back and I could see tears streaming down her face. I saw the scar and realized very quickly that something very invasive had occurred and that this little cyst was so much more underneath. They ended up pulling skin from her cheek as pseudo-skin graphs to fill in the nickel-sized hole in her nose and the scar went pretty much the length of her whole nose from her tear duct to her left nostril in a zig zag formation that looked like Harry Potter's forehead scar. I held her hand, asked questions calmly, and tried to bring strength even though, in truth, I was on the brink of fainting. In fact, I had to slowly make my way around to some chairs along the wall to avoid collapsing in a heap of flesh on the ground. The whole scene was surreal and not even close to how I was anticipating the day going. There were some frustrations, some intense conversations, some crying and some anger, but it was amazing to see my eldest bounce back even by the end of the day. I think if it was anyone else in our family, they would have been clotheslined and sidelined for quite some time, but she has faced no less that a few physical setbacks in her lifetime and her resilience is otherworldly. I'm not minimizing the way this rocked her world and still affects it even as the scar heals, but she has been an overcomer.
I could go into more detail about more details, but those are some of the moments that stand out as highlights/lowlights of her short summer vacation before heading back for her 2nd year of college.
I guess what I want to say that as her father I feel so conflicted. The feeling hasn't gone away even as I think about comparing this year to last. I don't want her to leave because I just like having my kids under my roof and under the care of my wife and I as well as her defender-sisters. I struggle moving on into this next season that feels like life is getting away from me. Next year it will be Aly and so on and so forth. It just gets more frayed and I get more afraid. Not the kind of fear that wonders if they are going to do everything right, but the kind of fear that is simply wonders if they are alright. When they are home, you can monitor that so much easier. All that to say, I just like having my family home, safe and secure under my watchful eye. It's not like I'm looking over their shoulder when they're here, or that I even see them all that much, what with all their friends, activities, work, and interests...but they come home each night, and the comfort of that can't be overstated.
I will miss my Kami Rose when we drop her off...more this year than last, cause there's more story to miss, more events that entangle our hearts and braid them together in shared memory. There will aways be 'more to miss'...I guess I didn't realize that. There certainly is something natural about them leaving the nest and learning to fly, but I don't have to like it.
And yet, like it or not, here it comes. This weekend will begin another chapter in the Holdridge story and I have great hope that every chapter will be even better than the one before. I love her with every fiber of my being.
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