All Grown Up?

I am leaving in a few hours for 10 days on the East Coast, to celebrate by youngest daughter's graduation from high school. Those of you who have been with this blog from the beginning know that this is no ordinary occasion. That much of the past four years my daughter's father has been caught up in his own romantic adventure, one that placed a distance between us, but a distance only of geography.

In a world moves in mysterious ways kind of miracle, that geographical distance brought us closer together then either one of us could ever have imagined. Family, that once meant so little, now means so much. One of the most wonderful benefits of the communications revolution of the past decade, the computer, the instant messages, the cell phones, text messages and sharing of even the most ordinary in our day-to day lives has kept us together while we have been apart.

So where I once labored under the torment of missing the final years of both my daughters' adolescence, it is apparent that I missed only the most cursory observations of their passing into adulthood. The growth of a child that is real, tangible, felt and forever, growth that manifests as the unfolding into maturity, of that wonder I have not missed a beat.

As for the fear of the parent of the time when their child is all grown up, I have learned that they are never all grown up. As with my parents and me, from the time of a child's emergence into the world, through the entire adventure that takes place along the continuum of days, weeks and years that follow, parent and child share a destiny of love, one that never grows up, never leaves home and with which we are never without.

Now the time has come to pack up the computer and head out the door for yet another milestone, in her life and in mine.

A