A Father's Lament

Where did the time go? The question haunts me as I watch my daughter walk across the stage to receive her college diploma. Only four years ago we had carried her possessions into the freshman dormitory and left her with hugs and brave words of encouragement. Then we cried all the way back to South Carolina. Now she is a graduate—and engaged to boot. What has God wrought? The “real world” of work and marriage is stealing my little girl, the kamikaze kid who did cartwheels across the front yard and back flips off the furniture. She can’t leave me now; I am still learning how to be a father.

If I seem conflicted, I am. While filled with parental pride as Jessica strides buoyantly across the stage in her medieval cap and gown, I nevertheless feel pangs of ambivalence about this latest rite of passage. My selfish heart aches as I imagine life without her kinetic presence in our household. No more spontaneous theatricals. No more all-night VCR movie marathons. No more helping with homework. No more dirty dishes for me to retrieve.

Fathers, of course, have a special relationship with daughters. The powerful chemistry between them is binding yet explosive. How else to explain the tangled cycles of tenderness and tantrums, nurture and strain, possessiveness and independence that mark our days together. The presence of a daughter in a household makes fathers do foolish things. You should have heard me interrogate the first boy who dared to take Jessica on a date. His very life was in the balance. On the other hand, my life was at risk when she experienced the hormonal turbulence of puberty. Talk about moody—she was a walking storm cloud. Only distance and deference brought me security.

With all of the objectivity of a father, I can say that Jessica was a relentlessly charming little girl—willful, hell-bent (I nicknamed her “tornado”), curious, dramatic, and precocious. She was daring and spirited, like a frisky colt. She was also intent upon leading. At age five, Jessica and her kindergarten friends loved to play school on the back porch. They would carry on in their imaginary school for hours unattended. As the weeks passed, however, we began to worry that Jessica always appointed herself the teacher. Finally we intervened, insisting that she let one of the other girls be the teacher. All seemed to be going swimmingly. Jessica reported, “Beth is a great teacher,” whereupon we asked what role she was now playing. “Oh, I am the principal,” she declared.

To be sure, the bounding and boundless little girl eventually discovered the limits of her fearlessness, as when she came home from school to find her brother’s python wrapped around the headboard of her bed. But her feisty spirit remains unchecked.

If it is true that the best thing a father can do for a daughter is to help her learn to be independent, to think for herself, to take risks, seize opportunities, and bounce back from failures, then I had it easy. I taught her much less than she revealed to me. I envied her passion. I relished her unbridled joy. I admired her frenzied serenity.

Life, she demonstrated at a young age, was for flying, not sitting. Don’t hold back. Jump. Jessica showed me the redemptive grace of leaping into faith and fulfillment, as the English poet Christopher Logue did when he wrote: ”Come to the edge. We might fall. Come to the edge. It's too high! Come to the edge. And they came, and he pushed and they flew.”

Congratulations, graduate. Now fly.