Operation Lily Put: Day -1

 Not sure if it should be day negative one, or day zero.  You figure it out.

So long ago.

Tomorrow I begin an adventure.  The short goal is getting the daughter to college.  The longwinded goal is to drive with her from Minneapolis to Baltimore in her car, then hang with my brother and his family for a few days, take a train up to CT to hang with my sister for a few, then take a train (!) home from New York along the Great Lakes, and finally back up to Saint Paul.

It's just that easy.

When I dropped the first kid off at college, I had the wife with me.  She's my rock, and after the son's convocation we left, went to a nearby state park to check out the scenery, and I managed to completely lose it in the car.  Luckily, wife was out looking at scenery.  But I was a blubbering mess.  Coming back to his school later in the year and seeing him on following holidays made me understand that we weren't losing him forever.  In fact, he's home for summers and it makes me wonder what I was worried about.  So ideally the second kid will be easier.

Ideally.

My son and daughter are very different characters.  My son has my brain on the creative side.  He's got the same perspective in many ways.  I'm sure he'd like to think he's weirder than I ever was, but he's got a ways to go on that one, even with his gender questions.  When he was going off to college I used to say it would be like losing a limb.  I would miss him that much.

For my daughter, it's like losing a small part of my soul.  She's got my brain too, but in a different way.  She has the analytical, but also the anxious.  Her attention to detail is about managing potential situations and how to handle them.  I'm not saying she's crazy like me, but she's got a leg up on the competition.  And for that I love her, and we understand each other in ways that a father fully appreciates with a daughter.  She could be aloof and distant, but she isn't.  She's smart and faulty like the rest of us, and I love her.  So I'll miss her.  But I'll know this time around that I'll see her again.  That she'll come home for the holidays or summers and sleep until 1pm and I'll wonder how she'll amount to anything being so lazy.  Like she's supposed to.  Like the boy does.  Like I did back in the day.  (I don't think her Mother did back in the day or now, but they have a special connection all their own.)

When she was little - a baby or a toddler or a tween or a teen - the joking phrase I used was "What color car, dear?" suggesting that I would spoil her to the ends of the earth.  Which is true.  Once, when she was but a little one (toddler?  baby?  memory sucks.) we went to a wedding and I remember taking her out on the dance floor and swinging her gently about in a slow dance and thinking in "five minutes" I would be dancing with her at her wedding.   We're not there yet, but I can see the young woman in the child and her independent nature and know it's all out of my hands at this point.

She wandered off to a summer job this year far from home, so it was a bit of a test for both of us on the homesickness and independence front.  I'm proud of how well she did, and it did help me get a grip on her leaving.  But this is still going to sting.

We will have three days of driving together getting her car out to Maryland.  With my son, I'll drive him down to school in Iowa and by the time we get there we'll have chatted for five hours and I'll be fully ready to let him go.  I don't know that will be the case with the girl, but we'll see.  We're both looking forward to the journey and adventure.

I'll blog about where we go, what we see, and all about the expedition.  It's Operation Lily Put because that's her name and I used to call her "Lillyputt."  And I'm "put"ting her in college.  The wife is taking the boy to his school on the exact same day, so this is going to be all me.  Just me and her.  And then just me.  It's ok, my therapist and I have talked about this quite a bit, I feel pretty prepared.

In the last few days we've all been busy.  Me with medical stuff, the wife with a new job, the daughter with packing.  Today we had a complicated dance of people being dropped off, picked up, errands run and packing carried down to staging areas.  In picking the daughter up from the local car shop (oil change and checkup) we rode my new scooter.  She hadn't been on a scooter in a long time, and she remembered back to my very first one twenty years ago.  (Less for her.)  And on the way home she suggested we go to Butter.  It's a local bakery/coffee shop.  When she was in first grade I would walk the two blocks to her school and walk her home.  Sometimes we would veer a block off the path and go to the local shop for juice/coffee and treats.  I will always remember it as a special time.  So will she, apparently.  And today when she suggested it I knew it was The Right Thing To Do, because it was bringing us full circle.

So we went, got the same coffee/treats we'd gotten a decade and a half ago, and sat out at a tiny little table on rickety chairs, and enjoyed our detour.  When I think of her as a little one, for some reason I think of her in one of her complicated but well coordinated and beautiful outfits.  Smiling a toothy grin and enjoying her sugar rush in the spring or fall sun.  Today she was explaining how the cups and containers were fully compostable, and talked of other things that an adult would talk about.  It was the same, only different.  And I know I'm about to spend a LOT of time with her, and might get a little weary of it -- but I doubt that.  It was just really wonderful to bring it back full circle, and take my beautiful little girl out like we used to back in the day, and have a treat.  Now I know she's going to go into the world, and do it really well and successfully.  But it was a good reminder of the girl she used to be, while also appreciating the woman she is growing into.

To my credit, there was no blubbering today, but I considered it.  Don't worry, it'll happen at least a few times this week.  But you'll be along for the ride.