It's August. And for most kids around the country, this means that it's back to school time. There are the few lucky kids who don't return to school until after Labor Day, but most kids will be going back to school soon.
My kid is one of those kids.
And honestly, back to school has always been a love/hate experience for me. I like the routine of school. I like having a quiet house for a set number of hours each day. But the frantic flurry of activity that has to happen to be prepared for school to start is always stressful.
However, this year is Malia's senior year of high school. And even though, in so many ways, she is still at the beginning of her life, this is also an end. It's the official end of her childhood. It's the end of her being a school kid.
She'll turn 18 during her senior year, which means she'll legally be considered an adult, although in every other way, she will be the same. But once she graduates from high school, things will definitely change.
College will mean living away from home. College means not getting phone calls from her school if she decides to skip class. College means not knowing where she is most of the time. College means she's learning to figure things out on her own.
And that's good.
But it's also sad.
We will miss her when she goes off to college. The house will feel very empty. Family chats around the dinner table these days are often about what next year will be like. And while we're excited, it's hard to not feel apprehensive. For these past 18 years, it's been the Three Tyler's: me, Brad, and Malia. Like the Three Musketeers.
And for the first time, after a lifetime of fighting furiously for independence, Malia is realizing that she likes being home. She is starting to really appreciate us as parents, and everything we do for her. She's discovering that, for the most part as parents go, we're pretty cool.
And along with this realization, for the first time that I'm aware of, she's apprehensive about leaving home. She's appreciating and acknowledging how nice it is to have supportive parents, and to have a home where there's always food and parents who will make her dinner or take her to get ice cream.
While we've always felt very lucky that Malia was a great kid, it's been eye-opening to experience her shift in perspective from sullen teen to contemplative young adult.
I've never been a parent who clung to the idea of Malia staying a child. I've always wanted to her to grow and be independent.
But now, I am starting to feel the heavy pangs of sadness that I know are going to come at me like a wave next fall. I am enjoying the more adult relationship that we're cultivating with Malia. I'm cherishing the fact she now spends time with us because she wants to, not because she has to.
Brad has understood and appreciated this facet of our family dynamic longer than I have. I think I was always so wrapped up in the "doing" of parenting that I forgot the "enjoying" of parenthood.
But I'm catching up. Malia doesn't really need me as a mother like she did before. I'm able to step back and just be around her, not feel like I need to hover in a constant state of mothering.
And I'm grateful.
I think recognizing how lucky we are as a family is good for all of us. We are a stronger family for the fact we appreciate each other. There have been years we didn't feel as grateful as we feel now. There were years when Malia absolutely could not wait for her senior year of high school—she was ready to get out as quickly as she could. She stomped around wishing she was in boarding school. She threatened to hitchhike to my Mom and Dad's house.
There were years when Brad and I wondered how we would all survive intact because of the fighting and the tension.
But as happens, she's growing up. She's able to understand our perspective more. And we've also grown. We've adjusted and we're able to understand her more. And, of course, just when we're finally getting to place where we feel like we are all finally understanding each other, it's her last year with us.
And senior year isn't like every other year. This year is filled with reminders that it's the end: senior portraits, senior trips, senior prom, and graduation. A whole year of reminders that this is the last time we're going to be involved in her day-to-day life.
It's a mixed bag. But most of all, it's exciting. The curse of parenthood is working and hoping that your kids learn and grown and become independent, only to then miss the days when they didn't know how to walk, or didn't how to drive, or didn't grow up and move away.
But, mostly we're happy.
Malia's already way ahead of where I was when I was her age. I never appreciated where I was when I was younger. I was always blindly anxious to move on to the next step. And because of that, I don't think I ever was able to truly experience things fully. My mind was always moving on to the next thing before the current thing was finished.
Malia is not making the same mistake.
Malia has been blessed with the ability to feel gratitude in the moment. She is excited for college, but also determined to appreciate her final year of high school. She's eager to move forward, but she's smart enough to realize that where she is, is pretty great. And she's recognizing that she will miss it when she's finished. And I couldn't be prouder of her for being so wise.
So I'm going to follow her lead and try and make an effort to really enjoy this last year we have with her. I'm going to remember to enjoy taking her back to school shopping. It's probably the last time she'll want me to go to the mall with her and pick out new clothes for school. I'm going to remember to pay attention to how joyful she is when we go to Staples and pick out a basket full of new notebooks and pens. (Honestly, school supply shopping really is the best part about going back to school, isn't it?) And I'll just try to remember that all the things that annoy me about her when she's in school, (grumpy mornings, late study nights, frantic searches for forms that need to be filled out) are things I will miss when she's in college.
Because that's the unfortunate thing about humans. We often miss all the things, the good and the bad, when everything changes. We usually don't know how much we appreciate things when we have them.
Next year, there will be back to school, but it will be fraught with a whole different set of stresses. She'll be moving. She'll be setting up a dorm room. Nothing will feel routine or relaxed. And once we drop her off at her university, Brad and I will come home to a quiet house. It will just be the two of us. The three Tyler's will become two.
So this year I'm going to try and savor all the experiences one last time—the good and the bad. Because with hindsight, I know I will appreciate them for what they were: time with my daughter. And in the spring, she will graduate, class of 2019, ready for what comes next for her.
I asked my Mom a couple of questions on this subject:
What was your experience when Jamal was in his senior year? Were you prepared for the experience of having to let him leave the house?
I thought I was prepared for him to leave the house because, as you know, he'd had a steady girlfriend for four years so, in many respects, he was already on his own. For example, if he was upset about something, he tended to go to her about it. It made living with him easy. He was more like a roommate.
Or so I thought. Then your Dad and I drove him to college in San Diego. On the drive home to Northern California, I was crying so hard that, even though your Dad was driving, he didn't feel safe and got off the freeway. What was going through my mind was this: "I cannot live in that house without Jamal being there." I think he missed it too because, for the first few months, he'd call me and we'd often watch Johnny Carson together over the phone.
The change occurred for me after he came home for Thanksgiving. I don't know why, but when he left to go back to school, from then on, I was okay with it. So it took about three months to adjust.
I think you're going to adjust much more easily than I did because you're already preparing for the change. I particularly love how you're planning to savor each activity you'll be doing for the last time with Malia, such as shopping for school supplies. What I see is that this will be a year of you and Brad (and Malia) slowly adjusting and so, when the time comes, it won't be a shock.
Is there a Buddhist teaching that helps prepare for the inevitable sadness we feel when things change? It's obviously not the same as the death of a person, but in some ways it's the ending of a relationship.
That teaching is right in what's known as the first noble truth. In the new edition of my book, How to Be Sick, I rewrote the chapter on that subject because I feel I understand so much better now what the Buddha was trying to teach us. I can't repeat the whole chapter here. Suffice it to say that the Buddha provided us with a list of unpleasant and painful experiences we'll all encounter in life and "losing what you cherish" is one of the things on that list.
Yes, it can refer to the death of a loved one, but it also refers to any kind of loss, such as the one that happens when someone you love moves out of the house. Knowing that loss is something that everyone will experience in one form or another (it comes with the human condition) is comforting to me because I realize that I share this painful aspect of life with everyone. This is why I titled that chapter "The Buddha Tells It Like It Is." I want to know what to expect in life.
He then goes on to say that when we deny or resist these "truths" of life, such as the inevitability of loss, we make things worse for ourselves because we're adding more mental suffering to an already tough situation. In my experience, he's right. This has become my life's task—to learn to accept with grace what comes my way, whether it be pleasant or unpleasant, lovely or terribly painful.
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