My daughter is 18, and when I’m not fighting unsuccessfully against her independence, I’m fighting unsuccessfully against my own nostalgia.
When she was in elementary school, I would drop her off at the “Kiss-and-Go” line, at her school. I always joked with her that the line should be the “Duck-and-Roll,” because I had to get to work!
One morning when she was in first grade, I dropped her off and was easing away from the curb and she was walking alongside on the sidewalk, blowing me a kiss. And she walked straight into one of the little saplings that had been planted there a few years before. It was a wee tree, but she hit it square, and she went down in sections.
She got back to her feet at a count of four, and through the car window, I asked if she was OK. She nodded her head. Then she shook it, and the tears began to fall.
“Get back in the car.”
We drove around the block a few times, until she pulled herself together, and then Kissed-and-Went once more.
The other morning my run took me past the school, and the tree, which is not a sapling anymore, either.
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