THE Relationship Blog

I do not know what happened. The default emotional state for most men is confusion and I am no different. My biggest issues with my daughter going to college is the paradoxical state of being that I am living in now.  I am the old man father of a college student while also being the young father of a 7 and a 4 year old. I know that I am disconnected at one moment and overly connected, to the point of paranoia, at other moments.

Now I am asking myself, how does this all effect me? I need to get my mind around the idea of a new family dynamic. This new structure has a wife who I am emotionally, spiritually and (almost) physically attached at the hip, two small boys firmly up my ass (until they grow up a little more) and a daughter who is successful in college. Of course she will be successful because she is always successful. Oddly enough, my concerns for her at this moment are few. Jeannie is short because she has an angel firmly perched on her shoulder.

So, what about me? How am I changing? I can understand why men have midlife crisis. (No, my love, I am not planning on going insane and having an affair with some little coed.) I understand the need to grab a hold of something that I can control. My daughter’s life, of which I am so very much a part, is not mine to control. I am only along for the ride. And the worst part is that I have no idea where I am going or when the next pee brake will happen.

So I am confused, which we all know is a lie. Confusion is the state that we men like to use instead of committing to an emotion. I call it confused because I refuse to say that I am afraid that I am old. I am confused because I will not admit that I need my daughter more than she needs me. I am confused because I want my little boys to go off to college before my youth fades while still staying 7 and 4 forever. I am confused because I have everything that I always wanted and can’t help the feeling that I want to turn it all back and start again. Only to have the same outcome because it is perfect.

How confusing is that?

THE Relationship Blog

As I sit here planning our trip to Colorado, I have had a million crazy thoughts. The one that had me laughing yesterday was, ‘I really don’t want to go’. This musing was funny because I actually considered it. What if I just said no? What would my family do if the planner, mapper, reservation maker and all around get-everybody’s-shit-together director decided not to do her job? I recognized these thoughts as distractions and quickly got rid of them. I started allowing my emotions to come up instead. The same emotions that had been choking me and making me feel completely paralyzed. I know all parents experience these feelings. I know that my Mother is feeling them now since I moved 3000 miles away from her. However, none of that makes this any easier.

Jeannie has been my full time job for 18 years. She has elicited every emotion in my wheel house and helped to create such fun feelings as exasperhugging (where you are so frustrated with someone that all you can do is hug them) and ragahilarity (where you are so angry at what they have done but can’t stop yourself from laughing at their fuckery).  The latter feeling was elicited by finding out that after two weeks of daily pulling blue gum out of her hair that she was actually chewing the ticky tac that her teachers were using to hold up paper on the walls. Or, the one she reminded me off yesterday, where she washed her hair with my very expensive body oil.

My sister tells me to focus on how amazing Jeannie is and how we never expected to see her go to college in the first place. Like a good Mother who can’t seem to turn off the need to nurture and keep my chicks safe, all I can focus on are the things she does not do for herself. All I can see is that I was so much more prepared for college than she was. All I can see is that I am letting my little (4’9”-and that’s generous) defenseless girl out in a strange environment without the safety net of her parents or even a trusted family member.

Sure, when I allow my higher self to take over my addled brain, she reminds me that Jeannie is a scrapper and always has risen to every occasion. For example, she spent a month at Duke University for summer school when she was only 13. She handled herself well. She lived in a dorm and was able to find her meals and wash her clothes and make friends and not join a gang or get roofied. It was a success! My higher self knows that she will do fine and even discover some hidden abilities that she has been unable to unearth because she has never really been allowed to really stretch her wings. All these things are known by my higher self but even she can’t stop the tears.

You see, for all my wisdom, I know that this move will forever change our relationship. No longer are we just Mom and Daughter because now she has a choice. Now she can choose what kind of relationship we have. Will she call me? Will she confide in me? Will this be where she gets rid of me? This is what behind the tears. Yes, I will miss her like a drowning person misses air but the root of all my tears come from my own insecurities as a Mother.

Time will tell. I will continue to work on these feelings of not being enough as a Mother (I thought I had already handled this). I will do my best to let her go and not attempt to enroll as a freshman at her school or murder a co-ed and assume her identity just so that I can be close to her. I promise not to call her constantly or become a permanent dial-tone on her Skype. I will do my best to let my little chick fly from the nest and I will always be there in case she wants to fly back home.

THE Relationship Blog

Our daughter will be in her new home on August 18^th. She will be living three states away from us; a mere 17 hours. She will be sharing a room with a stranger, eating food prepared by strangers and generally surrounded by individuals that have no concept of who she is and everything she has gone through to be at this point of her life. She will not have Mommy and Daddy championing her every day and twice on some.  We have less than 2 months to share all of our pearls of wisdom which will undoubtedly fall on deaf ears (because she’s deaf and only puts on her hearing aids when we bitch at her).  We decided to write these life lessons down so she could look them up and remind herself every now and then. So, without further ado, the 10 things we wish someone would have told us before we went to college/left home:

10. You don’t need anyone to validate you.

I didn’t learn that one until I was 30 years old. Oh, who am I kidding, I was 40 years old and still working on that issue. At Jeannie’s age, my friends had general rein of my emotions. If everybody was happy, so was I. If someone needed a hand, I had 2. I was the go-to person for everyone and absent for my own needs. Now, I am not saying that I don’t want my daughter to be giving and loving. Of course I want that for her! But, I want her to be able to tell her so-called friends, ‘You know what? You’re a bitch and I deserve better.’ Personally, I wish she would do that now to one friend in particular but time will take care of that problem.

9.  You can reinvent yourself a million times over but your essence will always be the same.

When we are young we think that our life decisions will be set in stone. When we are older and on career # 45, we realize that all that gnashing of teeth and sleepless nights were wastes of time. We are like cats; 9 lives and very bouncy. We are given this idea that the decisions we make at a very young age will remain on our permanent record. We are made to believe that life is a just a compilation of your schools cumulative records. We are made to believe that our GPA is who we are. I’m 45 and I have never been asked at a job interview what my GPA was. That’s right! The asshole who drank through college and graduated with a 2.5 is just as employable as a wallflower with a 4.0 and probably a lot more fun. Now please don’t get the impression that I want you to piss away your college years drinking but I do want you to enjoy yourself. And as for your career, you can change that as you evolve as a human being. We are not statues. We grow and change and so will your career.

8. Be your champion.

There are a million people lining up to kick you in the teeth when you are down. Don’t jump on the bandwagon. It is easier to demean than to elevate. Be the better person and champion yourself. Look at yourself in the mirror and tell that young woman she is a sexy beast who deserves the universe on a platter. The negativity of the general population is something that your parents have tried to generally avoid. Only surround yourself with positive people who will be loyal to you. You can allow them and yourself 20 minutes of wallowing but then cut that shit out. If you need a life preserver, call your parents. We have been your champions for 18 years and are always willing to jump in the ring.

You will need to come back for the rest of the list. Mommy is going to go find a Kleenex. These damned allergies!