College Farewells

I taught all three of my daughters to swim. Not to any accredited athletic standard, but just enough to get them moving approximately in a horizontal direction whilst remaining oxygenated. When my eldest daughter, Katie, was just four years old, I told her that on the day she could swim a length of the pool unaided, I would buy her a CD player. These were highly coveted items in the previous century.

I said, “You can do this! I know this feels scary, but all you have to do is take a deep breath and jump. I promise you won’t sink and I am right here!” I had imagined that this challenge would take at least a few months to be accomplished. To my utter amazement she looked at me and then at the water, took a deep breath, jumped and swam her first length! Her smile said it all.

When my youngest daughter, Olivia, had just turned seven I was successful in persuading her to take her first solo jump from the diving board. I was in the water, calling up to the tiny aquanaut anxiously edging her way to the brink of the abyss. From beneath the board, I encouraged her, “You can do this! I know this feels scary, but all you have to do is take a deep breath and jump. I promise that you will not sink and I am right here!” She looked at me and then at the water, took a deep breath and jumped. As she bobbed back to the surface, her smile said it all.

And then all too soon, Katie left us all for her freshman year at college. The summer was spent making lists and packing, with me pretending that I was not counting down the days to the heartbreak of farewell. We compressed what seemed like the contents of a four-bedroom house into the car and made the eleven-hour road trip to the next bright chapter of her life. 

I had been wondering just what I was going to say to her when we finally came to the big goodbye. I had prayed about this. What words are there? And if there were some words of particular wisdom and profundity, shouldn’t I have said them sometime before?! We hauled her belongings up to her dorm room and as my wife, Elena, helped Katie unpack, I was deployed to construct a set of drawers from Bed Bath & Beyond. The task was indeed almost beyond me. And then suddenly it was time to say goodbye. An upper classman knocked politely at the door and informed Katie that the welcome lunch meeting was about to start. I asked if we might come too, and he politely shook his head. One moment my self-assembly handiwork was being likened to the leaning Tower of Pisa, and then it was goodbye. Eighteen beautiful years, and then goodbye! I wasn’t sure that I was capable of saying anything, and then I knew exactly what to say.

I held her very close and repeated some familiar words, “You can do this! I know this is scary, but all you have to do is take a deep breath and jump. I promise you that you will not sink, and don’t you ever doubt that I will always be here for you!” So, she took a deep breath and then she jumped. We remained in her dorm room (for me to re-assemble the drawers under Elena’s supervision) and we listened, as her footsteps grew faint. I peered around the door to see how far she had made it down the corridor but she was already out of sight. Later that night she sent us a photograph of herself amidst a sea of new faces. Her smile said it all.