Homeward bound

Today, in honor of my daughter’s return home after nearly a year away, I’ll do some special things. I’ll take a shovel to the living room, dust off the piano, and put her computer back on her desk. I’ll string up a banner that says, “Welcome home” and I’ll bake a cake to celebrate. I may even brush her dog.

My daughter left last August for a year in France as an exchange student and I’ve missed her every day since she’s been gone. I’ve missed her fresh face in the mornings. I’ve missed how she hides behind her hands when she laughs. I’ve missed her sitting on the end of my bed at night, reading lists of things she’s going to do the next day or next week, while I try to keep my eyes open and look attentive.

Watching my child leave home for a year was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. I cried for the first two weeks that she was gone. My husband held my hand, patted my back and handed me tissues. “How can you be so calm?” I wailed. He shrugged. “I just know that anything that happens will have already been taken care of by the time we hear about it. There’s nothing I can do from here and there’s no sense worrying.” I told him, “You’re so unnatural.”

He was also absolutely right. Eventually, I quit crying and had an existence outside the one my daughter was leading far away, sort of. I set the clock in the living room six hours ahead and then I’d look at it during the day and think, “Now, she’s getting ready for school. Now, she’s in her favorite class. Now, she’s having dinner with her host family. Now, she’s crying her eyes out in her room.”

The phone calls back and forth were difficult and hilarious. My youngest son, by mid-October, was routinely telling her how he couldn’t even remember what she looked like anymore. My oldest son would tell her how much he missed her and it would take both of them a half hour to recover. Her father, who has a little French, would talk to her about the proper way to conjugate French verbs. I would ask her how to say important things, like “stuff,” and “stalker,” and “homework.” Then, I would listen to her recite what she’d done during the week and try to sound like I was paying attention (Amazing telephone reception — she could hear my eyes glaze over, an ocean away).

For the past three weeks we’ve hosted her fifteen year old French brother here at our house. He’ll stay another week after my daughter gets back and then he’ll return home. He’s looking forward to seeing his adopted sister again. She’d written before he came and told us to take good care of him and not make fun of his accent. We promised. Instead, we’ve been teaching him useful American phrases.

For instance, recently he came into the kitchen where my husband was making dinner and asked, “What means ‘Cut it out?’ Is it, ‘Shut up?’” “No, it means, ‘Stop it,’” my husband told him, whereupon he immediately walked into the living room where my oldest son was playing the piano in a particularly atonal way and yelled at him, “Cut it out!” It makes me wonder what kinds of useful French phrases my daughter picked up last year.

My daughter’s host parents have written me that she matured a lot this year while she was gone and I believe them. I can see it in her letters home and in the pictures she’s sent. I’m expecting an older child to walk through the door today but I also know that she will be different in other ways, too.

Her view of the world has grown bigger than what’s in her own back yard. It’s not just the difference between fifteen and sixteen, it’s also the difference between making plans for the next twenty four hours and making plans for the next five years. Her horizons have expanded this year to include a whole other half of the planet and so have her goals. I suspect her lists won’t be just about what’s happening in the next couple days anymore, they’ll be about what she has planned for the rest of her life. The next time she comes to sit on the end of my bed and tell her dreams to me they might take a little while to get through. I’d better get comfortable.