Today I’m blogging at Writerspace.
I’m a bit contemplative this week. My 19 year old daughter is in Scotland for a month. She’s at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival through a program for Theater or English majors to see a series of plays (I think 18 plays in 2 weeks!) and then she’ll be spending a week in London on her own. Sort of on her own—she’s visiting her best friend, who is studying abroad for a semester.
Kelly wanted to do this summer program to see if she, too, wanted to study abroad for an entire semester. But this is the first time she’s been so far away from home. Her college is only 5 hours away by car – easy enough to get to if she needs me. Now she’s halfway across the world. Twelve hours by plane – a full day counting drive and waiting time.
As a parent, you raise your kids the best you can and hope that they make smart decisions as well as grow and succeed on their own. You want them to be healthy, happy and have a hefty dose of common sense. But when they are 18, there’s this sense of panic, because now legally they are an adult and they can do whatever they want. You can only give them advice—outside of financial issues, you can’t really tell them no.
Though I didn’t see Kelly for 13 weeks between Spring Break and the end of her Spring Quarter at school, the next 4 weeks are going to be much harder.