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The Skinnie Magazine, May 2009

My daughter’s first home of her own, a small efficiency apartment, gives me a comfortable feeling. It looks like her. Sitting here beside my small suitcase, I scan the room.

Hanging on the wall above her neatly organized desk, where I recall seeing her sit for hours writing her high school term papers, are the letters C, A. T. H. Y in a vertical string. The summer I worked those bright orange needle point letters for her dorm room, I must have wondered: Would she graduate from collge? Would she find a job?

Now sipping a cup of tea from a heart-shaped mug we sent her one Valentine’s Day, I remember Cathy’s great announcement of last year: “I’ll have a job in a big city before I graduate in May.”

Her dad and I had our doubts, but we like her optimism.

She did it as advertised, landed a job after a hundred or more interviews and enough rejections letters to cover a whole wall. And we let out a sigh of relief.

Laughing to myself, I place my cup on her kitchen table, formerly my kitchen table. Can this be the same child I walked to kindergarten every day for six weeks until I finally convinced her she would walk the path alone? Can she now actually be out in the world selling business forms?

“I’m off to see a prospective client,” said he same girl this morning, who hesitated to answer the phone at age eight, for fear she might not know the caller. “Make yourself at home,” she told me as she stood, briefcase in hand, dressed in a tailored suit of light gray, a pin-striped blouse, a silver chain at her neck. She put the briefcase down. We hugged, tightly, then let go. “Say hi to Dad, to everyone,”she said.

“Sure, I will,” I said, grabbing another hug. “Bye, honey, “I said as a football climbed my throat.

A last glance. A smile. Then she headed out the door, briefcase in hand. A part of me went with her.

Now looking around the place that is hers alone, the past leaps out at me. The sleeping bag she slept in last night so I could have her bed went on many trips to camp, on numerous overnights, and still is filled with the giggles of Cathy’s childhood.

Sitting on that flowered sleeping bag at age ten, surrounded by friends, her happy voice rang out. I listened as she started a new ghost story. Could I possibly have imagined the Cathy of today? No, possibly not.

Back then, when I thought I’d never get any sleep, that the girls and their giggle fits would last forever, there was no way I could foresee the sophisticated young lady who handed me one of her business cards as we chatted at the breakfast table.

Lying on her coffee table, the one her Dad and I purchased the year she was born, right beside the scratch she made with twirling baton, are copies of Business Week and Time. She tossed out her stack of Seventeen issues when she visited home between graduation and the start of her new job. She packed all of her belongings, plus a few of ours. We watched Cathy pull out of the driveway, a U-haul trailer behind her. Watched as she left to begin a new life on her own.

Months later, when I arrived for my overnight visit, the towel lay on the bed jus the way I always put them out for her on trips home from college. She served me a cold drink. Hung up my dress. Offered me a snack. Made me feel at home in her home. It was like watching movie of myself.

Our visit was short, but we covered a lifetime of memories. Shared thoughts. Ideas. Hopes and dreams for the future. We went out to dinner and shared much more than the food before us. She drove me around her city, introduced me to some of her friends. Then we headed back to her place for more conversation, highlighted by visits to days gone by.

Climbing into bed, resting on the striped sheets of blue, the ones we purchased the day she fell off the balance beam and chipped her front tooth, I sighed. I said goodnight to my daughter and then fell into deep and happy sleep.

And now it’s time for me to leave. Placing a box of creamy chocolates I purchased when I took a walk after she left, I glance around once more. I grab a pen, a piece of note paper from the desk top and write a note. Bye. Thanks for the fun visit. Love your apartment. We are so PROUD of you. Take care.  Love, Mother. P.S. Water the plant I brought twice a week. Don’t forget.”

I add a crooked smiley face.

And now, heading out the door, I again feel the hug she gave me earlier. I take it with me as I leave her home and head for mine.