Was it so long ago that I sat, cramped in the bleachers of a high school which these seniors had outgrown, physically and ambitiously, watching my daughter collect honors and adulation from teachers both ready and reluctant for her leaving? Even then, I wondered how we had moved so rapidly from petty worries of middle school squabbles to university visits and thoughts of a major theme of study which, if our daughter, our savings and the university performed as expected, would lead to future gainful employment for our little girl.
And so it was that Dad’s Day arrived her freshman year, and we walked the campus to see the marching band before the football game, and eat at the sorority she had worked so hard to be accepted within. And then another Dad’s Day the following year, and another … until the final one became so routine that there was never a thought to actually attending the game, so we watched it on the TV in her rental house – the long sought-after sorority house already in the past – eating homemade pasta with her house mates and napping through halftime.
Even the study abroad, a topic of mutual insistence since her middle school days, already relegated to an iPhoto folder and sweatshirts with Dublin pub logos emblazened upon. Internships applied for now complete, work applications now proofed, and her final Spring break, as I write, flowing from present into past. The process of maneuvering work travel around collegiate graduation activities has begun, and soon enough the formal acknowledgement of honors and adulation will transpire again, complete with gowns and tassels.
It is well and good to marvel at the passage of time, so quickly for me as it is so slow for her, just as it is important to relish these milestones of hers and celebrate them before they too become shelved tomes in the library of my mind, to be opened again and again until the binders fray from use. Because, let’s face it, as far as fatherly concerns go, these years were the easy ones!
berowne.com 