FAMILY | FATHERS & DAUGHTERS

Saying Goodbye to My College-Bound Daughter

How Does Anyone Do This Well?

For weeks, even months, when anyone asked whether I was ready for Eva to leave for college, I said, “I can’t wait.”

And I meant it. She has never given me a problem in this world. We are close. I love her. And I was ready for her to go.

At the start of the pandemic in March 2020, Eva asked to live with me instead of going back and forth between me and her mom. It was about space, not relationships. She had more room in my house, more space for privacy, more space to take Zoom classes, more ways to be alone. And her dog was here. Of course, I gladly agreed. I wanted to stop missing every other week of her life.

We were cautious in limiting our exposure to others and in maintaining our social ‘pod.’ That caution led to a lot of time spent together, far more than I would have had with her otherwise: meals were planned, prepared and eaten together, we spent hours in each other’s orbit, and conversation was constant. We talked about her classes, political events, social change, all kinds of things. I got to know her better than ever, and I enjoyed her for who she was in a deeper way.

Unexpectedly we won the pandemic.

As conditions improved in summer 2021 and as she began her senior year of high school that fall, I couldn’t insist that she limit her social life, and I didn’t want to. She got a job as a hostess in an upscale restaurant downtown, and I started a relationship with someone in Charlotte, 130 miles away, so our weekends were usually spent apart. That intimate bubble of quarantine slowly deflated.

As her weeks till departure ticked away, I saw her less and less. She’d announce that she’d be home for dinner two hours beforehand, and then change those plans. Asking her to feed or–-God forbid — to walk the dog was like asking her to learn the language of a country she’d never visit. Asking for anything more felt like unnecessary provocation. So I avoided it, and instead, I stewed in imagined resentments.

As her last weeks at home slipped away in these missed connections and more people inquired about her plans and my feelings, I declared that I was fine, that she was ready to leave for college, and so was I.

Last May, her mother and I had agreed to drive Eva to Washington DC to take her to college together. I had asked colleagues to cover my classes, since her classes began two weeks after mine. But in July, her half-sister, 14 years her senior, said that she wanted to go. We didn’t have a vehicle among us large enough for four people plus baggage, and four would have doubled hotel costs.

I challenged that arrangement, but Eva did not want to ask anyone not to go, so I simply stood down. It wasn’t worth a fight. Her mom and sister could drop her off at college. I made peace with the decision.

Except for the fact that I couldn’t. As the day of her departure approached, I felt a strange kind of uncertainty. How should I mark her departure? How should I feel about it? The relief that I had claimed to feel weeks earlier was gone, and in its place were grief and fear. Gradually I realized that the angry resentment I felt earlier was just a mask for the honest fear and pain of saying goodbye to my only child as she left on her first step of adult life.

She packed a suitcase, several storage boxes, and a grocery bag or two with her mom on Friday morning, the day before she was to leave, while I taught two classes at the university. She then spent that Friday afternoon with friends. I bought a simple dinner and invited her mom back over, and we ate together and talked about her classes, her departure, and how we felt. It was just right. The next morning they drove away before 8:00am–-and I couldn’t stop the tears, not then or whenever they arose later in the day.

I’ve had many transitions in life–graduations, jobs, moves, marriage, childbirth, divorce–but each one, even the failures, felt like the next step in my life’s proverbial journey. This step of hers felt like something had stopped for me, like I was the booster rocket falling back to earth after having put the astronaut into orbit.

Everyone knows that life will break your heart, but I had never felt anything quite like that. After you pour all your love into your children, they leave. It’s natural and right that they do so. It’s the most natural cruelty of them all.

The Saturday of her departure was not the only time my daughter has seen me cry, but it was certainly one of the very few in which I was both tearful and speechless. To comfort me, she sent photos soon after they arrived later that day: on the national mall, the Washington Monument in the distance, a selfie in front of the Lincoln Memorial. And a simple text: “I love it here!” And I knew she meant it. I felt relief. Your child’s happiness is strong medicine.

She’s been gone several months now. I text her simple love messages every weekday morning and a wish for good classes. I hear back some days. We’ve had a dozen longer phone conversations, usually about class content and assignments. She’s doing fine, and she will likely continue to. I’m doing fine, too.

On the Saturday she left home for college, I spent the afternoon with a friend in his shop. Returning home, I rounded the slight curve at the bottom of my steep street and saw her car in the driveway. She couldn’t take her car to school, so it stayed here with me. For an instant I was flooded with joy, “Eva’s home!” before I remembered that she’s not, a match strike of hope quickly extinguished.

The sight of her car still does that to me every single time I return home. I don’t even regret it anymore, because it’s honest and vulnerable and loving. I’ll be saying goodbye to her in this way and in others for the rest of our lives, and I prefer to do it honestly from now on, and with love.