I don’t cry often, twice that I can remember. Once was 16 years ago, when we dropped our daughter off at the airport. Mariana was flying to visit a college in a far-away state, and I feared she would never live with us again.
I didn’t realize there were tears rolling down my face until my wife, touched and surprised, pointed it out to me. There is a link between a father and a daughter that I can’t explain. I’m just as fond of our two boys, but it wasn’t the same gut punch when they headed off to college.
My fears of 16 years ago about our daughter were borne out. Mariana attended that far-away college. It was the beginning of her life apart from us.
Yes, there was a period of several months after college when Mariana lived in our New Jersey house and commuted to her job in New York City. She hated it. As soon as she had enough money, Mariana moved to Brooklyn to share an apartment with friends.
She was her own person and she wanted her own life. I understood because I had felt the same way when I was her age. And yet…
In the ensuing years, Mariana would live in Asheville, N.C., Philadelphia, and finally New York City again as she followed her dreams. She worked for a few years as an artist, then retrained herself as a software engineer when it proved too hard to earn a living with a paintbrush.
We stayed close to our daughter. Every few months, she would visit us or we would visit her. But Mariana always made it clear that the one place she didn’t want to be stuck for long was our house.
Then the pandemic hit. In May, a packed station wagon pulled into our driveway. It was Mariana moving back home. Living in New York City had become an ordeal. And the technology company where she works had closed its office there, and all its employees were working remotely.
A few weeks later, Mariana’s boyfriend came to live with us. We also have a son who lives with us. Suddenly, we had five adults under one roof.
There were strains over fitting their healthy food and our regular-people food into our small, overworked refrigerator. I got repeatedly admonished for talking too loud when I do interviews for stories, bothering my daughter and her boyfriend as they worked upstairs. Recently, Mariana’s boyfriend filled our brand-new washing machine with heavy clothes that strained the machine. My wife emptied it, and re-fed one soaking item at a time into it. That seemed to appease the washing gods.
There were special moments. Mariana and I would drive to a bakery to buy bread together. My wife and Mariana would binge-watch television together. We had long conversations with Mariana; we had short conversations with Mariana; it was the closest we had been to our daughter since high school.
In mid-October, Mariana and her boyfriend left on a train for California. His family lives there. His parents are older, and he wants to help out.
Our modern world is based on mobility. A native Californian, I have moved all over the country in pursuit of my journalism career; Texas, Florida, Michigan, and now New Jersey. It was good for work, bad for family.
Our children grew up far from cousins, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. We visited family every year, and they visited us. But it wasn’t the same as living in the same town. And now I’m being repaid in coin.
Maybe in retirement. we can make things right. We do not know which of our children will win the grandchild derby, producing the first offspring, but we have threatened to move nearby when and if it happens. Nothing says families always have to move apart. Mobility can work both ways.
Our house suddenly seems big and quiet. And yet I’m not gripped by grief as I was 16 years ago. I have this feeling that our separation from Mariana is temporary.
Write to us at retirement@barrons.com
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November 08, 2020 at 08:00PM
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Tears Remembered: Keeping a Daughter Close When She Is Far Away - Barron's
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