Airport goodbyes - a different perspective two weeks later
It is already been two weeks, since we left our daughters at the airport to go back to college and her gap year. Ana Paulina left first, on her way for her second semester of the gap year, starting all the way in Thailand. Next day Maria Teresa left for her second semester of freshman year at Penn State. It was a tough two days as our twin daughters both left almost the same day. The house was full again for the entire Christmas vacation with all the kids at home but now two out of three left, leaving Jose alone with us :).
I like to look at these goodbyes from a gratefulness point of view. I feel so happy that my girls get the opportunity to do what they are doing. Through these experiences they will develop their own self, will learn that life is not easy, heck is not fair and they will understand, sometimes the hard way, that they must fight and work for what they want in life. So as I feel grateful for my daughters’ experiences away from home, I wonder, what has happened in their lives in the two last weeks?
María Teresa off the bat, got her flight cancelled from Philadelphia to State College. She had to decide then either to fly in a night flight to Harrisburg, which is then an almost two hours drive to Penn, or take a car all the way from Philadelphia to her campus (3 ½ hours). She took a car back to campus. Next, she did not have her suitcases. She had to learn, the hard way, how to deal with the airline and her luggage. One of them came a couple of days later, but the second one, the big one, came 10 days after she had arrived in campus. She moved to a new dorm room, (that is another story) and had to deal with moving all her stuff to her new place, get to know her roommate, the people on her floor, the new surroundings, etc. She also dealt with deciding if she will take 6 classes this semester or your “normal” 5 classes; she is taking 5 classes. She is in a Sociology class about race and ethnic relations, with over 700 students and probably the coolest class she has had so far (by the way, this class can be seen live every Tuesday and Thursday and is really interesting.) She already got sick and had to go to the doctor on her own and deal with that.
Ana Paulina, on the other side of the world, traveled through Fort Lauderdale the same day some insane person started shooting people in baggage claim, she was at that airport just three hours earlier. When she got to LAX airport, she got lost trying to find her gap year group and where they were going to meet. She took a 15 hour flight to Asia and she could not sleep too well, as the person in the window seat kept standing up to go to the bathroom. Then she was at Bangkok, and had a great time, eating at a local family home, learning to give massages, taking cooking lessons, doing a bike tour around Bangkok, learning about the city and learning more about herself. She is now in Cambodia learning conflict resolution while making sure she does not get sick as it appears a lot of people in the group are getting ill.
There is much more I can say about both of them and what they have done the past two weeks, but I think you get the point. And that is only two weeks in the lives of my two daughters. My point here is the following: we as parents, and I am including myself, a lot of the time do not realize the opportunities our daughters and/or sons are receiving and experiencing when they study or travel abroad. It is so much more than studying or traveling that they are doing, but we tend to focus on how much we will miss them. You know what? I miss them a bunch too, but I would not trade all that they are doing so they can stay home with me.
My “job” as a parent is to prepare them for life. Through all these experiences they are living, they are preparing themselves for what life has ahead of them. Will all the experiences be happy ones? Of course not, but life is not like that either. But by experiencing those up and downs that life gives you, they are taking another step toward becoming stronger human beings capable of achieving anything they put their mind into. It is not that I do not want them home with me, I would love that, but seeing them in another context, developing themselves as incredible human beings that they are, gives me a lot of joy and pride. I am extremely happy for them and will continue encouraging them in anything they commit themselves to do with their lives.
The lost luggage situation, the cancelled flight, the new dorm and roommate, the getting sick and mom is not there to solve it, traveling 15 hours in a plane, dealing with a new culture, being away so far from home: from all these situations and more, my daughters learned something. They might not realize it right this moment, but the accumulation of all those experiences will help them grow and achieve their next goals in life. I choose to feel grateful for everything life has to offer them in these experiences. If you were in my shoes, what would you choose?
