Changes

I guess I’m in a Phil Ochs frame of mind; hence, the title of today’s missive.

Daughter Two arrived home from college last night and of course, after hugs and tears and whirling, spinning dog greetings, we settled in with her favorite coconut cream pie to chat for a bit. We’d been looking forward to time with her for every day of the months since we’d last been together.

The thing is, she looked like our daughter and her voice was familiar. But the young woman sitting on the love seat trying to talk around chunks of crust and coconut shavings wasn’t the girl who left here for Boston.

Yeah, I know, it’s to be expected. We knew she’d have new insights, a more evolved self-image. What we didn’t – couldn’t – expect was that her way of framing her self-image has changed. She’s examining her intent and motives and progress in a way that we could never have helped her realize. And the level of her introspection is truly impressive.

It sort of illuminated for me a truth that we didn’t learn yet with Daughter One, who went to college close by, allowing for quite frequent visits. One has grown incredibly over the four years that will culminate in her Saturday graduation but as a parent, you’re less aware of changes that appear gradually and so she’s still entirely familiar.

Two has grown outside our range of vision and therefore, the changes are more jarring, if no less welcome. And with One going off to begin her career with Disney in Florida, henceforth we will know both daughters more from occasional snapshots than from a real-time motion picture.

I actually think I like this new mode of knowing them. It’s so much more revealing. If only it could somehow include actually seeing and touching them more often.