. The Girls Last night Marguerite graduated from …

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The Girls

Last night Marguerite graduated from Grover Cleveland Middle School. So, the grade school years are finished for what I at one time thought would be my youngest daughter. My oldest looks forward to her senior year in high school in September. Things that had seemed so far in the future not very long ago just keep flashing by the window on the Cannonball Express that is life.

This train, of course, picked up a new caboose a few stations back—Lydia, girl number three. She put a wrap on first grade today. In another seven years, I’ll sit in the same stifling auditorium I sat in last night, grinning at the cavalcade of eighth graders, each teetering on the cusp of early-onset adulthood with one foot still on the playground. With a pure kind of pride that they will be too old to experience four years later, they’ll march up for diplomas. Some, as was the case last night, will wear Metalica T-Shirts, and some will sport awkward Windsor knots and semi-tucked-in shirts. The rest will stride by in dresses ranging from Springy to promish.

I will have a walker.

My kids are at an interesting stage right now. One spent the school year learning how to read, another how to drive. The girl in the middle made a noticeable transition form one of these worlds, childhood, into the other, teendom. I now have two high school girls in the house, which, to be honest, is actually kind of nice. They are getting along a lot better lately. Perhaps Emily’s imminent move to the next level–presumably “out”– is alleviating some kind of pressure that’s built up in recent years. Or maybe everybody is just growing up.

Lately, I’ve had a strange and completely unexpected feeling. A regret, actually. I regret, despite my preference all along for daughters, that I don’t have a son! This is really shocking. I’ve always felt that the father-daughter relationship suited me best, especially given that father-son relationships have been kind of screwed up on my side of the family for as far back as I know–which would be back to the non-existent relationship between my father and his. Lately, however, watching the older girls advance toward adulthood, I feel I’m missing a kind of relationship in my family that I didn’t miss at all when they were babies, kids, and tweens. What is it? Have I gotten over a fear of failing as the father of a boy? Or, after being completely surrounded by girls and women in my family for so many years, do I now seek refuge in some kind of male bonding? My father and I were beginning to relate to each other in a new way, man-to-man, I guess, just before he died. Maybe I’m remembering that. Or maybe it’s that most basic of midlife crises—the realization that, “this is it.” Whether or not I ever wanted it to happen—and I really didn’t—it ain’t a-gonna happen.

I’ll get over it.

This is Marguerite’s moment, after all, and of course I’m very proud of her. She has done remarkably well in school, and she has boldly broken from family tradition to do well at sports—basketball and soccer. I mentioned a couple of days ago that her soccer team won their division. Tomorrow, we are celebrating her birthday a few weeks early by taking Maggie and her friends to the shore. To Sandy Hook—that self-describing, furthest-north stretch of the Jersey Shore beaches, boasting the highest number of jail house tattoos per sunbather on the Eastern seaboard. It has a wonderful view of lower Manhattan on clear days. It’s a girl-watchers’ paradise.

School’s out!
Vanx

Painting by Andrey Tamarchenko