We got to the airport an hour early, just in case Susan’s airplane had met up with a tail wind. My husband, Mike, and I had taken the afternoon off to meet the plane, and the two of us paced back and forth in front of the large airport window like two tigers waiting for their afternoon meal.
“What time is it?” I asked Mike.
“About five minutes later than the last time you asked me,” Mike responded, a little irritated.
I felt wounded; I should be forgiven my impatience. After all, I hadn’t seen our daughter for a year, and now she was coming home for a visit. Of course, we talk two or three times a week on the phone, and Mike communicates with Susan by e-mail at his office, but that’s not the same as being face-to-face. I was anxious and excited at the same time, and there was still a half hour to go before the plane was due, so I resumed my pacing.
When the plane finally arrived, 10 minutes late, Susan was one of the last to get off. But finally there she was. She looked the same, yet different. She had grown her bangs out. She told me she was going to, but I hadn’t seen her without bangs since she was in 2nd grade. She was dressed differently–in a gauzy slip of a dress in a tie-dyed pattern, and she was wearing sandals. I was used to seeing her in jeans or shorts and running shoes. I can’t remember the last time she wore a dress. She moved with a casual elegance as she found her way over to us, backpack slung over her shoulder. “Well, hel-lo!” she said in typical fashion, the accent on the last syllable. That was the way she always greeted us, whether on the phone or in person.
Mike suggested a welcome-home drink at the Hilton next door to the airport. Susan ordered a margarita with extra salt.
“Whatever happened to Diet Pepsi?” I wondered, aloud, in my “mother” voice. We had our drink in the sports bar, eating popcorn, watching football highlights on the big-screen TV with the half dozen others who were there at 3 in the afternoon, and listening to Susan talk about school. She was a candidate for a master’s degree in college administration, and her speech was sprinkled with the acronyms, the name-dropping and the inside jokes of her new profession-to-be. Mike or I would ask a question occasionally, interrupting the flow, and Susan would respond patiently, like an experienced teacher addressing a very dull pupil.
After our drink we went home and were joined by our younger daughter, Amy, who had come down from her college campus for the night. The four of us went to dinner at one of Susan’s favorite restaurants. She’s a vegetarian, and we’re all still trying to get used to that. I had spent lots of time devising vegetarian menus (zucchini lasagna, bean and three-pepper burritos, lentil and rice soup), but I was afraid I didn’t have enough choices. Susan might be reduced to eating pasta 47 different ways, which, when I think about it, would probably be just fine with her.
During the visit, Susan and I did many of the things we used to do together–movies, shopping at the outlet stores, going for power walks and eating lunch out–but it was different; it was less mother-daughter now than friend-friend. Susan’s aura of sophistication was so daunting that I found myself tongue-tied on a few occasions, because I didn’t want to say anything stupid. I felt off-balance more than a little bit by this new daughter of mineby her self-confidence, her drive, her passion and her strong opinions about issues such as diversity and women’s rights.
She seemed so sure of herself now, and she made me feel awkward and tentative, and she disagreed with me about almost everything, from men’s hairstyles to politics. Even her reading preferences were impressive. Books that she had read for pleasure in the old days, such as “Little Women,” “Gone with the Wind” and an occasional book of poetry, had given way to others, such as “The Closing of the American Mind,” “Mother-Daughter Revolution,” “Race Matters” and “The Pursuit of Wow.”
But just when I thought she had crossed over the threshold into adulthood forever, never to return, Susan would talk baby talk to our dog, Jazz, or put her feet up on the back of the chair in front of her at the movies. Suddenly she was 10 years old again, and I was Mommy. Once I caught her watching “Sesame Street” and singing along with the characters on the show. Another time she refused to take a shower until I removed the microscopic spider in the bathtub. One evening, Susan and Amy had Mike and me in stitches while they recited all the dialogue from the movie “Auntie Mame,” complete with accents and voice inflections.
This all happened during Christmas vacation. Susan went back to school. She finished up her master’s in May and then came home for the whole summer before beginning her new, post-college career. We went to movies, had lunches out, walked together and had long talks, as friends do. Susan doesn’t take advice from me anymore–about anything–and she still seems to consider it important to hold opinions that are the opposite of mine. But I didn’t feel off-balance anymore or resentful. I was just proud of her. I loved it when we got together with relatives or friends and Susan expounded on the ins and outs of her profession. Her grasp of the field never ceased to amaze me, and I loved showing her off. We had a wonderful summer together. But now it’s over.
As I write this, at 8 o’clock in the morning, Susan has been gone for only an hour. Mike and I helped her load her car last night. She was up early, putting the finishing touches on her packing and attempting to straighten up the guest room where she had taken up residence for the last three months.
This time there was a bigger lump in my throat than there was when Susan left for her freshman year in college. I don’t know why this is so. Maybe experiencing the empty-nest syndrome with the same child twice in seven years is just too much. Of course, I’m happy for my daughter; she’s going to have an exciting new life in a new location, with new friends and a challenging job, but I’m going to miss her. I’m going to miss mothering her. I’m never going to have to drive her to soccer practice again or help her write an English paper. She won’t ask my advice on clothes or boyfriends anymore. I know she’ll never come home for a whole summer again–ever. From now on, when she comes home, she’ll come home as a visitor, for short periods of time. And for the first time she will be totally independent. She’ll have her own health plan and buy her own auto insurance. She won’t need me anymore.
Susan felt a lump in her throat, too, when she left. I know this because she hung back, reluctant to put that last suitcase in the car. She spent a long time sitting on the floor of the library with Jazz, stroking her and crooning to her, like a child deriving comfort from her teddy bear. She said she wouldn’t leave until Jazz gave her a kiss. At last, Jazz obliged, and Susan had no more excuses. We walked slowly out to the car. There was a long last hug; Susan said she would call as soon as she arrived. I told her, once again asserting my motherliness, not to drive too fast. And then she was gone.
