Harry’s Mom! George texts me. When does Harry get in?
Word travels – by phone, by email, by text, by Facebook.
Too slow at texting, I dial George and leave her a voicemail. “George! Can’t wait to see you guys! Harry gets in this Friday. She’s here for two weeks. Dinner at the house the week after we get back from vacay. Everybody’s invited. Spread the word.”
* * * *
Harrison (like most of her friends) has just finished her sophomore year in college back east. It’s a long way away, and it’s been a long time since I’ve seen her. She’s coming home, but only for two weeks. This summer, she’s staying in Boston.
A day after she arrives, I’m taking Harrison to Mexico. It’s been four years since we’ve had a real vacation. And it’s been five months since I’ve seen my baby. I need time to know her again.
* * * *
My intention is to let Harrison go. My hope is that if I do so, she’ll choose to come back. Just because she wants to.
“I am like a beautiful butterfly that’s just burst its chrysalis,” she told me as a junior in high school. “And you are like an eight-year-old boy who wants to trap it. You have your little cup, and you’re trapping the butterfly with it, and then you’re sticking it in the refrigerator to slow it down, and then you’re making a little leash of dental floss and tying it around its neck. Why? Why would you do that?”
I don’t want to leash the butterfly. So my intention is to let Harrison go.
* * * *
Over dinner before her return for second semester last January, I acknowledged Harrison’s emancipation. I toasted her decision-making, her initiative, her resilience, and the myriad ways in which she was stepping up into her independence. Sentimental perhaps, but we both teared up. Maybe it was the benediction we needed to begin moving into the “adult stage” of our relationship. Sometimes corny speechifying is just the thing.
Back in Boston, Harrison started calling more often. Not to ask for advice or money. Just to talk over classes. Issues with her roommate. Her boyfriend. Politics. She called to tell me she was staying back east for spring break. A few weeks later she called to tell me she as staying back east for summer.
“Fuck!” I said as I got off the phone after that conversation. “FUH-UCK!”
* * * *
In Mexico, once settled in at our hotel, the first thing we do is have a beer together. Harrison takes a picture of us both and our cervezas and limes, holding the digital camera out and away from our smiling faces.
* * * *
In Mexico, we do four things: We play, we rest, we eat, and we talk. We seem to share the space easily. We are mostly companionable, and Harrison lets me know when I’m backsliding into mama mode. I remind her that it takes time to make big transitions, and as she’s evolving, I am too.
“You’re uptight,” says Harrison in exasperation one night, as I try to find us a taxi back from a rather deserted downtown, nervous as stray dogs begin gathering around us, sniffing at our boxed leftovers.
“I’m cautious in new surroundings,” I say. “And don’t forget: That character trait contributed to you successfully reaching adulthood.”
* * * *
Talk is all well and good, but the time spent together reveals all; shared experience either makes (or doesn’t) a relationship.
In Mexico, Harrison and I take the taxi to a small village with a good swimming beach and spend the morning and early afternoon in the warm, azure water. I suggest that we get a little more exercise by hiking the shoreline back to our hotel. When the sandy beach disappears into rocky cliff, we decide not to turn back. We share the tense adventure of picking a path across cliff tops about a half mile over to the next beach.
It takes us a while and we get badly sunburned and very cranky at the prospect of tumbling down the jagged rock, but we make it. We are rewarded with beer and tacos at an open air restaurant we happen upon, right on the beach. We sip from our bottles and gaze out over the blue into the bright cloudless sky that stretches as far as the eye can see. We hail a taxi to take us the rest of the way back to the hotel.
It becomes a running joke: Too cheap to take a taxi, I almost get us killed falling to our deaths in Mexico.
Now that’s a shared experience.
* * * *
“Best advice you’ve received?” I ask Harrison, sitting on the beach watching the sunset as the waves crash at our feet.
“ ‘Don’t listen to my advice.’ ”
“Worst advice?”
“’ Trust your gut.’ I say: NEVER trust your gut. Why would you trust important decisions to something that takes stuff and turns it into shit?”
I howl with laughter. Did I mention that Harrison’s an ENTP on the Myers Briggs, while I’m an INFP?
* * * *
We play, we rest, we eat, and we talk. By the end of the week, our sunburns are deep cinnamon tans, and we are relaxed and reconnected. We take a taxi back to the beachside restaurant and eat tacos and ceviche as the sun sets. We laugh (surreptitiously) at the gringo who plays a guitar and sings oldies from the 60s and 70s, with a cheap synthesizer providing the backbeat. We sing along to help when he forgets the words to John Denver’s “Country Roads.”
We are companionable as we pack and travel home.
* * * *
Back in Cali, our first stop home from the airport is Scout’s place. As we have done for years, since the two first started hanging out together in 7th grade, we swing by to pick her up at her house in the Paly hills and bring her back down to spend the night with us.
As we pull up, Scout dashes out from behind a parked car, waving and shouting. I slam on the brakes, and Harrison and I hop out. Big group hug – and then the girls whip out gifts for each other, part of their ritual greeting. Harrison hands Scout the bracelet she haggled for in the marketplace in Mexico, and Scout hands Harrison a carved wooden penis – a souvenir from her week’s travel in Bhutan.
“For prosperity and abundance,” she says.
“You win,” says Harrison.
* * * *
It is Reunion Week, week two of Harrison’s visit.
Out of school now, all of Harrison’s friends are back in town and stopping by. They exchange gifts and gossip. They are a roving flock, moving en masse about Paly, from house to house, to shopping mall, to frozen yogurt shop. I am glad I’ve had my week with Harrison. Now she spends time with her father and the gang, and so there’s only the occasional sighting until our group dinner.
Thursday evening before Harrison’s weekend departure, the kids start showing up at the house around 5:30. We’re celebrating George’s birthday two weeks in advance, since Harrison will be back in Boston before the official “quincinera” as George has dubbed it – and we’re celebrating summer and everyone being together again. Harrison, George, Lucy, Parker, Roxanne, Ginger, and Rina are all here, and we are doing our usual: grilled flank steak, grilled vegetables, potatoes, chocolate cake.
All in dresses, the girls are, I realize, stunning young women. All (except George, who will be soon) are 20 or 20+. They photograph each other incessantly – most of them are amateur photographers, and all of them are hams, so the shots are arty and cool – but I suspect they just want the mementos.
* * * *
Harrison leaves tomorrow. Word travels by text message and by phone. If they can’t reach her, they call me. Where is Harrison? We all lie in wait as she runs around town doing last-minute errands with her father.
Lucy and I go to dinner while we’re waiting. We brainstorm places where she might shop for a dress for a friend’s upcoming wedding, and Lucy catches me up on school and news of some of the kids I haven’t seen in a while. A month ago, the first of their high school classmates got married. It stuns me to realize that they are of age and only two years younger than I was when I married.
“Want to go to the movies next week?” asks Lucy.
“Yeah, I’d love to,” I say. I tell her that Kate and Jake and I have already agreed to continue last summer’s Summer Sundays, the weekly backyard barbeque tradition we started with Harrison and the girls. Even if Harry can’t be with us and attendance varies, we think it’s a good idea to keep up the practice so whoever is around can meet up. “If we plan it, they will come,” we agree.
Lucy likes the idea. “Great. Let me know.”
“So, I guess you guys don’t think it’s weird to, umm, hang out . . . even without Harry . . . ?” I ask.
“Kinda,” says Lucy. “But we’re getting used to it. So you could probably try calling us once in a while. Just don’t be a stalker.”
Unbeknownst to me, Lucy has made arrangements in advance to pay for dinner. The check comes with her credit card, and she signs the receipt. I am touched and impressed. “Thank you so much! What a sweet and generous thing to do. You’re such a planner!” I say.
“You’re so surprised because you still don’t get that we’re grown up now, do you?” she retorts.
* * * *
It’s the night before Harrison flies back. The crowd congregates once more at our house.
They are loud, ever in motion. Three are there – Lucy, Scout, and George – with George handling incoming calls from Parker and others. “No, Harry’s still packing. No, we’re at Harry’s mom’s house. Harry’s mom says come over. No, don’t come over. Harry’s leaving soon. We’re stopping by Rex’s house. No. We’re not partying, just saying hi. ‘K. I’ll call you when I know what’s happening.”
* * * *
While the rest are in the other room, I go to help Harrison find things in hers.
“Do you have everything?” I ask.
She’s leaving again. It hits me as I stand in her room, which she will leave, as always, a wreck. And I realize that, with practice, I am getting better at letting my daughter go. But mostly, it’s easier because I know that Harrison is happy and excited about the life she is creating for herself.
Harrison reads me though. (Always has.) She walks over and hugs me. I hug her back and this time, I don’t let go. I realize we are both crying.
* * * *
In the other room, George noodles with the guitar. Lucy lounges in the armchair. Scout keeps up a running commentary. “Hey, Harrison, don’t forget to pack your Bhutanese dick. You ARE taking the Bhutanese dick, aren’t you?”
“No.”
“What? You’re not? I carried that dick – on my back, on MY BACK, for God’s sakes! – all the way from Bhutan!”
“I’m taking the dick. I was just being coy.”
“And where did THAT get you? Now you’re dickless. I’m so viciously offended.”
“Shut up and give me back my dick, dammit.”
And so it goes.
* * * *
Finally, Harrison is ready to go. Everything is packed. Well, almost everything.
Lucy picks up the Bhutanese souvenir. “Wait. Why is there a wood carving of a penis?”
It’s a long story, Lucy. We’ll tell you later.
Note: The Word Wench’s Weblog is a fictional memoir, and any resemblance to any person living or dead (you know who you are!) is purely coincidental.
Tags: college, empty nest, friendship and community, grown children, parenting, Personal
