Real Families

It was the fifth time we had done this, share Denver as father and daughter. The spirits of the younger girl, going back all the way to the first trip when she was 13, hovered near, seeming almost as present as the married woman now plunging so quickly, to our mutual shock, toward age 30. This presence of my daughter as many different girls and women proved an opportunity to ponder the parenting journey.

I say ponder, not conquer. As a father now for nearly three decades, one thing I can see is that parenting involves an ever-shifting set of challenges and opportunities, not merely tasks to be mastered on the way to a parenting diploma. So I see more clearly than at the beginning how hard it is to glimpse what lies ahead.

But I did hope I was learning a few things as I visited with all five versions of my daughter, Kristy. Actually more than five, since I also could see many other versions, from the baby who dropped to the floor on Christmas morning (I had taught her to roll into my arms, but she only got the rolling part; her mother was not pleased) through the toddler who crawled across papers on my desk before computers were invented to the stage manager of her sisters (spied in home videos) who became a theater stage manager in college days.

Among the things I learned were these:

Mark the journey. We didn’t know at the start of our Denver saga what a way to mark the journey it would become. The first time came about because we thought she would enjoy accompanying me, a book editor, to a book convention. It was so much fun we did it again.

Then we mixed in our family tradition of taking special parent-child trips at key junctures in their lives. Kristy asked me to take her back to Denver for her “18 trip.” During that trip she hoped we’d return for her “21 trip.” Then at 21 she wondered if we could still do it even if someday she got married. Six years later we did. And how we celebrated on the fifth trip the haunts and memories and life stages marked by the prior four!

Grasp that parenting stays intense. The most surprising learning is how intense parenting remains after children grow up. Maybe that feeling ebbs as children grow even older, but so far I don’t see the signs. My heart still falls and leaps, sometimes even more intensely than it once did.

Back then the task was to get my children safely to adulthood. After that, I vaguely expected, parents rest. And in some ways we do. Diapers, ear infections, school, driving lessons, first crush and first crushed heart—all completed. Time for the hammock.

Except now it’s questions such as, Will she marry? Who? How will it go? Can she handle grad school, part-time work, marriage and all that debt? Is her health insurance good enough? What do I do when she’s hurting and I can’t go with her like we used to for fast-food breakfast before school?

Cherish the gift. I did manage, even as the utterly imperfect father of young children I was, to celebrate reasonably often the gift my daughters were. Thank God I did, since we travel so quickly from the daughter selecting Misty out of the Norwegian Elkhound litter to the daughter earning a degree in environmental studies. Yet there can be more space to see our children as the artwork they are once they leave home. We’re still implicated—seeing hints of ourselves for better or worse in the child before us. But our day-to-day responsibility has faded. And being with a child who lives far from home becomes a special occasion, no longer another routine along with toasting the bagel.

Now, instead of being almost within the painting that is our child’s life, we can sit outside it, gaze at it, cherish it. Not because it’s flawless. True art never is; the greatest art is riven with flaws and tragedy even as sun dapples leaves in crystalline air. But because it is what it is: our child, whom we love, in whom we are (to echo a Voice cherishing son Jesus) well-pleased.

We flew back to our separate coasts, Kristy and I. She was perfectly capable of doing this. But since I had sponsored the trip, I felt while I awaited confirmation of her safe arrival as if no time had passed at all: She had just been born, she was in my arms and it was my calling to keep her safe. This is mid-journey parenting: holding a baby while the woman flies away.

Michael A. King, Telford, Pa., is pastor, Spring Mount (Pa.) Mennonite Church; publisher, Cascadia Publishing House LLC; and editor, DreamSeeker Magazine.