At my Dad’s funeral at Miramar National Cemetery near San Diego earlier this month, my child and my nephew sat at the head of the family row, where together they received the folded flag from the honor guard.
After that solemn moment on a rainy California spring morning, my child, unbidden, took my hand and led me to the stand on which a container with my father’s ashes stood. We said a last goodbye together.
I was reminded at Miramar of the time our then 17-year-old and my husband held hands during a family walk in our Denver neighborhood. That was the fall our kid drove to community college English classes, so far the only foray to college.
In addition to taking the community college course, our child found work as a staffer for the Colorado chapter of the Human Rights Campaign, a national LGBTQ lobby group; as a teacher for a project that brings theater education to the schools; and as an organizer with a local nonprofit that encourages young people to get involved in politics. My husband and I became empty nesters as our child rented a room across town, paying room and board with earnings from the main jobs and from occasional work writing and taking photographs for a local record company that also publishes a magazine. Our child even went on the road with one of the label's bands to a festival in the Nevada desert, and has told me of the joy of helping musicians and other artists. Could a future as an impresario be in the cards? Art school?
There was also a short stint as a pre-school teacher. It’s the season of life for courageously trying out choices. Among them a screenwriting workshop.
Our now 20-year-old has moved on to a year-round job at a mountain ranch, where training has included wilderness first aid and acclimating horses to riders. During the summer, the work includes teaching young campers about mountain flora and fauna. Artists have not been abandoned, as some weekend time is devoted to helping run an anarchist music collective in Denver.
During morning runs in the fall, I see parents and small children walking hand-in-hand on the way to the first day of kindergarten. On one early summer morning, I saw a father in a dark suit holding the hand of his little girl, who was wearing a pink dress and a white cardigan, as they hurried across the street, late for a preschool graduation ceremony. Holding hands was perhaps reassuring for them both.
That was once me and my child. It still is.