Every year since 2008 my calendar shows that the month of September begins with a three day event:
Sweetheart’s (maggie) birthday
Sometime before she turned twelve, Maggie set up a three day recurring event to celebrate her birthday.
I don’t know when she accessed my calendar, what made her decide to add the event, or what made her create the event that begins a day before her birthday and ends a day after.
There may be a hint in the note:
Get a BIG ROCKING gift!!!!
The wording, all-caps, and four exclamation points were all hers. That’s what she was thinking when she was eleven.
Now she is 21.
I can’t believe it.
She is an amazing child who I need to stop thinking of as a child.
Her drivers license is now oriented in landscape not portrait to indicate that she is of legal drinking age.
But that’s not what makes her an adult.
Talk to her for a moment and you know she’s grown. She’s still a young adult with the sureness when she might be cautious and the caution when she might be more certain – but she’s an adult.
She doesn’t need my permission for many things but she still accepts restrictions that I suggest.
She is the most important person in my world and I try not to let that be oppressive or make her uncomfortable.
I love her more than I can ever express and so I don’t express it – it would be awkward and she’d hate it.
She’s 21.
She wrote to her school to ask if she could check into her room a day early on her birthday so she could be with some of her college friends on her twenty-first birthday.
They said yes.
So on Friday, September 1 we drove to Washington, D.C. for a birthday eve celebration with Kevin, Lisa, Ben, and Eric. Ben and Eric are essentially her cousins so it felt perfect to spend her birthday with them.
Birthday eve – also known as the end of day one of Sweetheart’s (maggie) birthday.
The day began with filling the car up with the stuff Maggie would need for her junior year and strapping her bike on the back using a borrowed rack.
We stopped for coffee in Ohio and lunch in Pennsylvania and pulled into our destination in time for an amazing, multi-course, leisurely dinner. Each course was distinct and paired with a perfect beverage.
After we finished with dessert, we sat in the living room for a bit. I was exhausted. I thanked everyone and said I was going to bed.
It turns out I wasn’t – we waited the twenty minutes until midnight for Maggie to officially be 21 and then went to bed. So much like New Year’s Eve celebrations at our house.
The next morning we stopped at my cousin Ben’s house to have brunch with him, Rachel, and their one year old baby. It was hard to leave them (especially the baby), but in early afternoon we headed up towards Philadelphia.
We got all of Maggie’s things moved in from the car and down from the dorm storage. We set up her bed after she wiped down all of the surfaces with a disinfectant.
I never would have thought of that and I’ve been an adult for a while.
I looked at my 21 year old daughter and just asked what I could do to help.
We met a couple of her friends and one of their mother’s for a birthday dinner and Maggie had her first legally purchased cocktail.
I dropped her back at the dorm and said good night to her and left her on her twenty-first birthday.
I drove two hours towards home in the pouring rain and stayed in a hotel that Kim and I had often stayed at.
I got up, did some work, and then headed back home – stopping at Rick and Laurie’s for their pre-Labor Day picnic.
Day three, the last day of Sweetheart’s (maggie) birthday, and I came home to a very quiet house.
Annabelle was at the kennel.
Maggie was at college.
Elena and Kim, well, you know.
Maggie is grown and I’m adjusting.
I’m so proud of her.
I’m so happy for her.
But man the house is quiet.