Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire See you soon, kiddo

See you soon, kiddo. I'm hugging my kid goodbye as I drop her off at college. Suddenly, I'm my dad. I'm flashing between being 18, headed away from home, and being in my 50's with my last kid about to move out. It's more than a little weird.

See you soon, kiddo. My dad might literally have said just exactly that. When he did, if he did, it would've been because he was at a loss as to what the hell else to say. What DO you say? It's all been said, or else it long ago needed to be. Too late now. The love? It's already there, she knows, it doesn't need saying, albeit manifesting now as a slight hoarseness of the voice and a shyness of my eyes. Be careful out there? Have fun? Be good? Try hard? Keep your heart open so that life can... yadda yadda yadda? It's been said. It's launch time. Go time. It's....Time.

Launch time is a good way to put it, because a teenager on the verge is like a Saturn 5 rocket on the pad... still chained down, rumbling, smoke billowing across the scene, shaking the ground. They are a force of nature. Ya gotta launch them or they might just explode! So there's that: a certain necessity to the whole thing.

(And you WANT a good, vigorous, conclusive launch. I mean, you really do. Pretty much. Except the part of you who raised this kid from just a little.... rocket.... a little Estes, or one of those water-rockets we pumped up and launched in the 70's. That part doesn't want the rocket to go away.)

See you soon, kiddo? It's a question as much as a statement. It's a hope. Because, what's soon? Freakin' Thanksgiving?! It's August! "See you"? How exactly will I see you? In passing... at holidays... awkwardly... as an old man.... a grandfather..... aaaargh.

All right, all right. Pull the nose up on this thing before it craters into maudlin despair.

See you soon, kiddo. And I will! This particular kid is physically gifted, and is continuing with sports into college. As soon as she can earn field time, we'll start going to games. Maybe sooner! So I will, I hope, get to continue to marvel from afar at the perfect symmetry that is hers, athletically. The size. The strength. The speed. The aggressiveness. The coordination. The combination of those things. The desire. Most of all: the willingness to fail, very publicly, if that's what it takes to succeed. Man, you gotta love that, when you see that in a kid. And I do.

So do a lot of other people. I'm proud to say, I was wise enough to stay out of the way and let many other adults get a hand in her formation: her coaches. She's leaving a many-branched trail of heartache behind her.... as she's supposed to, I suppose. We are all adults here. Our stories are largely written. It's her turn to bat. But for those of us who love and respect her, it's a loss that will leave a mark. And there's a lot of us.

See you soon, kiddo. But I won't. This is the end of an era, no point sugarcoating it. We won't be living together anymore. I LIKE living with this kid. She's good company. She holds down her end of the teeter totter. She shines a powerful light. Next, it will shine elsewhere. That hurts, no other way to say it. I'll "see" her, but it won't be the same. And that breaks this dad's heart.

See you soon, kiddo. See you soon.