Sharing My Daughter

The gladness of Kayleen’s wedding arriving: it springs up everywhere – this is the week!

The sadness of Kayleen leaving: I never know exactly when or how it will hit me.

It might tighten in my chest when I walk down the hall and look in at her door and see the empty book shelves in her room or give a quick little stab as I write us3 on a weekend meal chart after writing us4 on all the days up to Sunday.

During sharing time at Oasis, the ache may spill over and run down my face in little streams as she speaks, all choked up herself, trying to express to her church family what they mean to her and how much she’ll miss them.

And when I go out the door of The Carleen House in Guys Mills, Pennsylvania and walk through crunchy leaves in the tangy autumn air to get in the van so we can head back home, I think about the rooms we have just painted and cleaned and about the dishes and books we have just shelved and about the sheets and beautiful hand-stitched quilt we have arranged on the just-assembled bed. Then it hits me again: she’s leaving us, and next time I come here, it will be to visit my daughter all newly turned Mrs. Atkinson.

It seems like I’m giving her up. Or am I merely losing in order to gain? In a sense, I have been sharing her with others most of her life. It’s what a mother does, pretty much, from the time her child is born. Let go, release, offer to others. Is this sharing solely giving, or is it also receiving?

I shared Kayleen with relatives - her beaming grandparents, the doting aunts, the near-her-age cousins. Especially the girl cousins. They’d go off to each other’s houses to play, imagine, and giggle. Or whisper secrets far into the night at sleepovers. I’d let her go maybe even when there were beans to pick or the Saturday dusting to do for Sunday company coming. These same cousins, though, turned into young ladies who easily dropped in at our place on a whim and ended up sitting around my kitchen island eating my food and including me in their fun and wise conversations. For awhile, one even called me Second Mom.

I let Kayleen begin attending Sunday School when she was between her third and fourth birthdays. It seemed like she slid off my lap right into the flock of children traipsing downstairs to their classrooms, with hardly a backward glance. (She has her two older brothers to thank for bragging up “being old enough to go to Sunday School”) She held her teachers in high regard, forming friendships with them that continue to this day. She had their good example to follow when she began teaching Sunday School classes herself as an older teen. They say it takes a village to raise a child, and I’m grateful to have experienced the Sunday School part of our church village.

I taught Kayleen kindergarten at home, but when she was almost six, I said bye to her that very first morning of Grade One at our church school. I said Have a good day! every morning after that when I dropped her off at CCS or when she went out the door to catch her school ride. I no longer had an eye on all her daytime activities. She sat under the sound of someone else’s teaching. The number of people influencing her began to expand, to include even her young peers.

Her character development also became the concern of her instructors. Once, when Kayleen was in the older grades, one of her teachers spoke to me about an area of my daughter’s interpersonal relationships needing improvement. I felt called on to sit down with my daughter and exhort her in love. A thing which I dreaded doing actually got Kayleen and me talking, and looking back, I would say cemented a pillar in our mother-daughter bond.

I’ve also noticed how Kayleen has benefited from a variety of school teachers who have shared their expertise with her over the years, far surpassing what I alone could have taught her. I see her love and knowledge of music, her appreciation of literature, her Math skills, the sewing tips she learned in Home Ec, and I’m grateful.

After graduation from high school, Kayleen started leaving us for longer periods of time. As parents, we started travelling more, and telling her bye more. We drove her to Bible School where we dropped her off to experience a term and a choir tour that meant she was gone from us for seven whole weeks. During that time, she expanded her Bible knowledge. She developed a greater appreciation for choral music. And she gained skills in forming new friendships. We went to hear her choir program and enjoyed meeting her new friends - and making connections with people we had been to Bible School with ourselves.

Then we released her to a TWO-YEAR term of study at a small private college four hours away from home (Does attending Faith Builders build the faith of the students or their parents?) in another state, another country actually. She studied hard and learned how to teach and brought back much – a deeper appreciation for her parents, her heritage, her church.

She also made close friends and introduced us to them – lovely young women that became my friends, too, dear enough to me that I welcome them with momhugs when they walk in my door. One Kansas lass came and stayed with us for a week during Music Camp and got to feeling so at home with us that she claimed my vintage Hayward mug as hers to use whenever she comes.

The young men at FB became good friends to Kayleen during the two years, too. We met a few of them when they came to our community one weekend to play in a volleyball tournament on the same team as Kayleen. Eventually, one of those guys asked Ken & me for permission to date Kayleen. We gave the permission and now we are soon to receive a son-in-law.

In between, there’s been a whole lot of letting go - and receiving in return. I let my daughter go on her dates with Carlin, sometimes for whole weekends at a time. But the two of them gave as well, joining us for family devotions and “hash times”, serving us grilled pizza, arranging for birthday surprises that involved Kayleen’s suggestions and Carlin’s designing skills. 

I watched her go off with Carlin to visit church people over supper, and I watched their friendship grow with families who were already dear to us. This makes me happy. Kayleen went off with Carlin to meet with the pastors and their wives for premarital counselling. The conversations they had there were initiators of dialogue between Kayleen and me, on marriage topics we may not have entered into as easily, were we to snatch and settle them down in front of us on our own.

I let her commit to live with Carlin wherever he moves and lives and has his being, which is, at least for the first years of their marriage, in Pennsylvania in the village of Guys Mills in a sweet little house a short walk from his work at Faith Builders. Last weekend, I helped Kayleen pack our van full of bridal shower gifts and the first load of her belongings and I helped her move it away from here and across the miles to settle in another place for another era of her life – without me.

The first day there, I got to join my daughters and daughters-in-law in the fun and excitement of preparing The Carleen House for its future occupants, and the next day I got to join Carlin’s family in a continuation of the theme. At the end of both days, when the hard work of painting and cleaning was done, we sat around and relaxed, gabbing, snacking, and laughing with each other in a very homey and comfortable way.

I shared my daughter and ever since, I’ve been accumulating lovely people and rich experiences.

All this doesn’t mean that I won’t ache when I see her go. In fact, these days the giving, not the receiving, seems to be the longer end of the sharing stick.

Come Saturday, if you see me over in my corner at the reception dabbing away quiet tears, maybe it will be that I’m overwhelmed at the sight of all the wonderful gathered people whose lives Kayleen has touched in some way.

And maybe not…

This Post's Quote:

"I let you go and you brought me back a whole new world." – Danette Martin

This Post's Childhood Memory:

Impressions of weddings that I attended as a child (back when whole families were invited):

*Being a gift receiver along with my twin at our aunt’s wedding, feeling all grown-up in our cream-colored dresses with the big wide belts (we even had cream fabric belt loops on those dresses!)

*Eating pink, green and white pillow mints and peanuts out of tiny pleated paper party cups

*Eating ice cream that came in individual Styrofoam cups with cardboard lids or in a block encased by paper. In the latter scenario, you’d need to strip the paper off a rectangular block of ice cream that was half melted by the time you received it while going through the buffet line and got back to your metal folding chair seat and could get the thing opened on your plate.

*Watching the bridal couple stand behind the loaded gift table, opening the wrapped packages one at a time, holding up each item and publicly thanking the giver who was likely – or unlikely - to be listening right at that moment in the audience.

*The songs. Mostly from the Christian hymnal. For many years I thought of Tread Softly as strictly a wedding song. I loved the hushed tones in which we sang it, and felt that the Master really was here, and we were sharing a foretaste of Eden in that moment.