Today I drove my 18-year-old daughter to her high school, where she’s a senior. We left a little early to hit the local Starbucks, so she can have the drink that helps put her on a better mental path into the day. We drove the long way back to school, which is only 3 blocks from our house, so she would have time to enjoy her beverage.

(I never use that word but it landed on its own in my brain just now. Beverage. I hear it and I go straight to a center seat on a tight airplane, where I sit cramped uncomfortably between two huge human beings hogging the elbow rests, unable to process the flight attendant’s offer of a Cold Beverage.)

(I know what’s happening as I sit here thinking about beverages. I’m trying to avoid getting at what brought me to this blog screen. Back to topic:)

During our brief drive, we had a typical morning chat. Jesse told me about the absolutely terrifying dream that brought her to me in the middle of the night. You don’t want to know. She often has terrifying dreams, and her dreams are always vivid. This has been true since she was old enough to scream out in her sleep, when she was just a tiny little thing, her head small enough to be cradled in my own small hand.

This morning she told me about other dreams too, lively and not all scary, and full of crazy good original ideas for screenplays and novels and short stories and mangas and anime. We talked about her second semester courses, which are just starting. We talked about the graphics class she doesn’t want to take but probably should, to help prepare her for college and that is right around the corner and oh my god how did we get here.

I feel like I’ve spent the last few years body-surfing on a huge, churning wave, my head sticking out the front and me just desperately, barely hanging on to keep from getting tumbled under and crushed. I didn’t know I had the emotional core strength to make it this far, but I’ve surprised myself. Family health problems and hospitalizations, deaths, Covid, mental health challenges, becoming my mom’s primary caregiver, kids growing up, finding myself on the local school board where unexpected and sometimes awful challenges have arisen, intensive DBT therapy for our family and kid, on and on it’s one thing or another. I live on the day to day.

In other words, an ordinary life full of head-scratching and dissonance and scheduling problems. But a few years ago, my kids still seemed little. And now it’s unexpectedly crept up on me… they’re becoming adults. My teenage son is at least 9 inches taller than me. Jesse is legally an adult, though anyone following brain science knows that hers won’t hit full adult stride for some years to come. Still… college?

In this ordinary American life of mine, I pulled up to the high school’s front doors and Jesse slowly got out of the car. As she struggled into her backpack and gathered herself, I offered her my mommy sweet nothings. Have a great day today. Stay strong and positive. You look really cute in that outfit, you look fly. She shook her head and laughed quietly. ”Yeah, I look fly,” she muttered, a wry grin on her face as she turned to go. 

I sat in the car and watched her stride off, and she never looked back as she walked into the building. My kids rarely look back. I felt an ache that was familiar, my breath catching in my throat and dust catching in my eyes — that feeling when I watched my kids walk off to their first day of preschool, kindergarten, middle school, watched them face all the firsts without me right next to them — a feeling somewhere between longing and regret and loss and pride and wonder and grief and relief. 

It hurt. It felt good.