JOSEPH N. BELL
Driving Sherry and me to the airport in Denver last Sunday evening,
my youngest daughter, Debby, cut off the freeway and drove for many
miles over dark, deserted back roads that made me uncomfortable. She
called it her "shortcut," and when I asked her if she planned to
follow the same route home alone after she dropped us off, she
verbally patted me on the head and said, "It's all right, Dad. It
really is."
She said the same thing to me 33 years earlier, when I took her to
the airport soon after her graduation from high school. She had
earned her airfare by waitressing during her senior year and was
going to visit the family of an Italian exchange student with whom
she was clearly enchanted. From there she was going to Denmark to
visit the family of a student we had hosted. The plane was late in
departing, and as we stood around rather awkwardly in the waiting
room, I felt there were things that -- in my role as father -- I
should say to her. She sensed this, and to my great relief patted me
on the head and delivered that all-purpose line, "It's all right,
Dad."
I didn't then understand the importance and satisfactions and
sometimes heartbreak that can grow out of getting regularly
reacquainted with children as they approach and then deal with the
complexities of adulthood. I thought I'd arrived at this
understanding a lot sooner than I really had, and it took some
fumbling years before I found that out. Now, I welcome the kind of
opportunity I had for a fresh look under changing circumstances when
I made my annual Christmas trip last week to Boulder, Colo., where
Debby has lived for almost three decades.
Watching and listening and participating briefly in her lifestyle
set me to wondering at what point, if ever, in the lives of our
children do we embark on the process of reacquaintance when we know
it might challenge the familiar -- and mostly comfortable --
relationship and visions we tend to carry of the child we've raised.
I probably approached this backward, because instead of wanting to
keep my children young, I tended to hurry them into adulthood so I
could talk with them about what I considered substantial matters --
like when to sacrifice rather than swing away, or whether to hit a 17
with a dealer's 10 showing, or why Adlai Stevenson should have been
president of the United States. Such talk was my fantasy, and it was
probably as stressful to push it on my growing-up offspring as living
up to the Ozzie and Harriet family fantasy that was laid on other
