It is my daughter’s last night before her flight to the States. We are nearing the end of an era, with both kids about to leave the nest. Fiona will spend three weeks visiting the grandparents before returning home and starting her university course at the end of July.
“Do you know where my adapter is? What about the neck pillow? Should I bring my Doc Martens?”
Yes, yes and no. It’s summer in America, plus the boots are big and hard to remove.
Those are the easy answers. My unspoken queries can only be resolved with time: how will I manage without my girl? What kinds of conversations can I have with the dog? How do I protect my space so I don’t invite people and trouble into my life just so I’m not alone?
Until a few months ago, I envisioned her brother and I finding our way as a duo. Just he and I in the house. Really, mostly me and the dog. Finley is hyper-social and would go out with friends every night if I let him. Sometimes he goes out even after I’ve told him ‘no.’ It makes me angry. Fiona tells me I need to control him better. “What do you want me to do, physically restrain him?” I ask her. “Yes, if you have to.”
Not bloody likely.
In March, Finley told me he wanted to attend high school in America. For years, I have told the kids I would be willing to move all of us to the States for a year, kind of like a family exchange program. For years, the answer from both kids was ‘no.’ “We would miss our friends,” they said. They both wanted to finish high school in New Zealand.
Fiona graduated last year. Finley has another year and-a-half of schooling left in our adopted home. But something within him shifted recently, brought on partly by the implosion of his friend group. Some of the boys he used to hang with starting treating him like trash after he did something stupid (though not criminal) I won’t elaborate on here. For a couple of weeks, Finn didn’t feel safe at school. Around that time he started talking about trying out high school in the States.
We weighed the options: Spokane, where we lived for ten years before coming to New Zealand, or Ohio, where the grandparents lived? Spokane would have a bigger school system and a better soccer program than the small town where I grew up. Finley might be able to live with a friend. But what if they had a falling out?
Ultimately, the decision about where to send Finley was less about friendship and more about family. If he lived in Spokane, he would not see the grandparents often, since it’s a day’s travel by plane. Time and illness have created a new urgency about connecting with family. None of us are forever. So we focused on Ohio, and Finn will live with my dad and his wife, attending high school in Ashtabula. The soccer team is small enough that the coach and players are anticipating the arrival of the new kid from New Zealand.
As I write, Fiona sits opposite me on the sofa. She is stretched out in her favorite corner, rubbing Ally’s belly and wearing earpods while watching her phone. It’s probably a video of one of the K-pop groups that she’s wild about.
We ate lunch today at a restaurant in town perched above the Tauranga Harbor. The server asked if we were celebrating a birthday. I said yes, because we always mark Sean’s birthday, which is two days from now. He would be 61, which the kids agreed is very old. We wondered if he would have been bald by now and I imagined him sitting in the unoccupied fourth chair at our table. His absence is always present, especially during these transition times.
We raised our glasses of juice and ginger beer, a toast to Sean and life and new beginnings. We ate risotto with peas and thyme, salmon with miso and salad and prawns with ciabatta. I studied the faces of my tribe members, trying to further encode their eyes, their noses, their hair and their lips. Finley’s eyes are partly hidden by a mop of thick, wavy brown hair. “I tried to dye it with light brown streaks, but it didn’t work,” he said. Fiona has plaited her hair in two Dutch braids, blonde highlights mingling with brunette strands. Six years ago, I had written about when she braided my hair, her 12-year-old fingers working expertly to fold one section over another again and again. I have blinked and she has grown, though she still does my hair.
Talk shifts to what Fiona will do in America: an outdoor concert, major league baseball game and a trip to an amusement park are among the highlights. Finn wonders if he, too, can go to Cedar Point after he arrives in Ohio in late July. We nosh and chat and I want to bottle these fleeting moments in the hours before everything changes. Once upon a time, both my kids lived at home. We were mostly happy, but they could not figure out how to place a dish in the dishwasher unless I asked. They left piles of shoes at the front door and clumps of grass on my car’s floor. They chewed through all the snacks and opened a mostly full pantry saying, “There’s nothing to eat!” Their showers were too long and they rarely walked the dog. Still, I love them and sometimes when they’re at work or school I wish they would always live with me.
I would have ordered key lime pie for dessert, but the server never reappeared to take our order, so we paid and left.
We have known this time was coming for years. I remember asking my brother-in-law, John, if it was hard to see his oldest kids leave home. “Not really,” he said. “By the time they’re teenagers, they eat your food and sleep in your house like it’s a hotel.” I see his point. But as a solo parent, I don’t have another adult to debrief with every night during dinner. No one will tell me about work like Fiona does. “I was with the grumpy cook tonight and I wanted to cry,” or “I was really fast and got all the deliveries done, peeled ten kgs of potatoes, swept, mopped and was out 15 minutes early.” I won’t hear Finley’s brief synopsis of his evening as he comes home three minutes before nine. “We had a spa at Connor’s and ate sausage rolls and played FIFA [video soccer game].
Earlier today, I ran a half marathon with my running group. It was not a race, but a training run that anyone could jump into for as few or as many kilometers as they liked. I mostly kept with the same group, running slightly slower than them because that was my pace. The run reminded me of parenting and the end of this era. I can seek solace from my friends, but ultimately I run on my own.
As you and I have discussed , we both moved to each others home country due to life changing circumstances. I miss NZ but am so grateful for the opportunities and success the USA presented me. Finn and Fiona have the “ best of both worlds” to take advantage of! How cool is that! You are letting them fly.