辛迪·卡恩·舍洪/Sandi Kahn Shehon
My daughter Allie is leaving for college in a week. Her room is cluttered with shopping bags filled with blankets, towels, jeans, sweaters.
She won't talk about going.
I say,“I'm going to miss you.”and she gives me one of her looks and leaves the room. Another time I say, in a voice so friendly it surprises even me:“Do you think you'll take your posters and pictures with you, or will you get new ones at college?”
She answers, her voice filled with annoyance,“How should I know?”
My daughter is off with friends most of the time. Yesterday was the last day she'd have until Christmas with her friend Katharine, whom she's known since kindergarten. Soon, it will be her last day with Sarah, Claire, Heather……and then it will be her last day with me.
My friend Karen told me,“The August before I left for college, I screamed at my mother the whole month. Be prepared.”
I stand in the kitchen, watching Allie make a glass of iced tea. Her face, once so open and trusting, is closed to me. I struggle to think of something to say to her, something meaningful and warm. I want her to know I'm excited about the college she has chosen, that I know the adventure of her life is just starting and that I am proud of her. But the look on her face is so mad that I think she might slug me if I open my mouth.
One night-after a long period of silence between us-I asked what I might have done or said to make her angry with me. She sighed and said,“Mom, you haven't done anything. It's fine.”It is fine-just distant.
Somehow in the past we had always found some way to connect. When Allie was a toddler, I would go to the day-care center after work. I'd find a quiet spot and she would nurse-our eyes locked together, reconnecting with each other.
In middle school, when other mothers were already lamenting the estrangement they felt with their adolescent daughters, I hit upon a solution:rescue raids. I would show up occasionally at school, sign her out of class and take her somewhere-out to lunch, to the movies, once for a long walk on the beach. It may sound irresponsible, but it kept us close when other mothers and daughters were floundering. We talked about everything on those outings-outings we kept secret from family and friends.