Another Road Block Down (for real)

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Tori's 100+ mile drive and first foray onto the Interstate, all of which took us one step closer to that long-overdue driver's license. That was the last of the actual driving milestones to pass and left nothing for her to do but show up and take the test.

She did that yesterday.

After more than two years of building up that test in her mind and then some problems with her paperwork when we arrived, the experience was a little unsettling for everyone. Then, an hour later...

Another Roadblock Down (almost)

One of the concrete reasons that Tori still lives with me is that she doesn't have her driver's license. The reasons for that are complex and interrelated, but being unable to drive is not among them. She's been driving with various licensed drivers for more than two years. She's quite comfortable behind the wheel.

She hasn't taken her driver's test, though, and she'd never driven on the interstate.

Today, after driving 80 miles out on country highways just because the weather was beautiful, she turned onto I-88 and drove to DeKalb, got off the interstate, turned around and got back on.

She took it right in stride.

All Grown Up is Not a Thing

Yesterday was Tori's 20th birthday. There was a bit of confusion over it, due to what her boyfriend referred to on Facebook as our joint custody arrangement, and the end result was three straight days of birthday celebration and enough junk food to kill the child.

I expected that she'd be doing something with Brad on her actual birthday (Friday), so I invited them over for dinner on Thursday and baked her a cake. Brad figured that she'd be doing something with me on her actual birthday, and so made the world's richest brownies (8 types of chocolate) for her on Wednesday.

Somewhere along the way, she cleared up her plans: she and I were going to Chipotle on her actual birthday, as we have every year since she was 12.

On her 12th birthday, Chipotle was pretty new (at least to us) and she'd only been there a couple of times. That was back in the day when they gave you four soft tacos in an order, and at 85 pounds or so she scarfed them all right down, saying, "I just love this taco so much!" So, when I offered her the chance to go anywhere she wanted for her birthday, she picked Chipotle.

Not what I was expecting, but we went to Chipotle.

It so happened that her 12th birthday was a pretty exciting one, because I'd spent a then-outrageous amount of money buying her tickets to see the Jonas Brothers. We had a pretty amazing time at the Batavia Chipotle that night, and her reaction made the money well worthwhile.

So, last night, for the 9th "actual birthday" in a row, we headed out to Chipotle. She'd already had birthday brownies and a birthday cake, but I brought these cupcakes anyway, because these are the same cupcakes I brought along on her 12th birthday, since she'd chosen a place that wouldn't serve her birthday cake.

I'll be honest--they taste about like they look. But, neither that nor the constant parade of home-baked goods stopped Tori and her friend Anai from eating six of them during the night.

Anai showed up unexpectedly; we were getting ready to head out to Chipotle when Tori learned in a Facebook message that she was in town from Chicago.

Tori and Anai have been friends since kindergarten, and they're "birthday buddies," having been born on consecutive days, 16.5 hours apart.

Here they are at 6 at the library sleep over, and at 15 at Homecoming.

And last night, at Chipotle.

Tori wanted to go to the Chipotle on the far end of DeKalb rather than the one on campus, because it wouldn't be so loud and chaotic. I hope no one else chose that way.

The bottom line, I guess, is that life and relationships don't necessarily change all that much, despite the big structural changes that might be occurring underneath. I'm sure I'll forget that many times in the months ahead, but that's where I am today.

The Boundaries are Fuzzy

I don't mean the boundaries about what's appropriate, what questions to ask, who can say what, etc. 

We've never had that problem.

 In fact, years ago when my much younger sister earnestly told Tori that she should know that she could come to her when there were things she couldn't talk to me about, Tori came to me questioning what sort of thing that might be and why.

No, the lack of clarity here is much more fundamental.

Can You Be a Gilmore Girl in the Singular?

I didn't deem myself a Gilmore Girl. Years before I'd ever seen the show, people were telling me that my daughter and I reminded them of the Gilmore Girls. Even so, I was shocked when I watched my first episode, just three or four years ago. I may have checked my house for bugs and hidden cameras.

See, I'd always thought it was just the basics that made people say that--I was the single parent of a teenage girl. We got along and were basically partners in life. We both had long, brown hair, but hers was a little lighter than mine.

It wasn't that.

In part, it was the open lines of communication and the intelligence and the deep friendship that layered perfectly with the mother-daughter relationship.

But still, there was more.

Mostly, the constant, unrelenting humor and inside jokes and reference-based conversation. And the fact that when an online friend asked me whether we talked fast like the real Gilmore Girls, I was surprised to learn that they talked fast.

Maybe most of all--though I didn't recognize it at the time--it was Lorelei's constant, certain drive to empower her daughter to be the separate person she was meant to be, even though the inevitable result of that was beyond her imagination.

Sure, Tori and I made jokes about how when she moved out I'd have to subscribe to the magazine she usually read most of out loud to me on the day it arrived, and how we'd adopt the Post-It note system that the Gilmores employed during that awful time when they didn't speak for months.

But, the day-to-day stuff...there's no telling in advance what that looks like.

My daughter is turning twenty on Friday. She hasn't moved out, but she spends a lot of time at her boyfriend's house. As I write this, I haven't seen her in five days. The flexible life we've always lived together--I homeschooled her, and we both freelance--gives her the flexibility to go visiting whenever she likes, for as long as she likes...just like the way we traveled together throughout her teens.

Can I tell you a secret?

I love when she's gone. Absolutely love the formless days and nights and the quiet whenever I choose it. I get more work done, and my living room is cleaner. I'm an immersion writer, so that uninterrupted alone time really allows me to thrive, creatively and professionally.

She knows this, and it doesn't hurt her feelings. She gets me. She loves me a lot, and she enjoys hanging out with me, and she doesn't miss me when she's doing something else.

And then I get up to pour a cup of coffee and it suddenly hits me that maybe those days of running out to get her an iced mocha before she wakes up in the morning are truly gone forever. Maybe I'll never again see that sleepy little smile and hear her murmur sincerely, "I'm loved," because I knew she'd need coffee this morning and went out in the cold to get it.

And I feel like someone's kicked me in the stomach.

Change is an everyday part of raising a child, and I've long said that each new stage is in its own way as good as the one before. Though a part of me misses the tiny toddler on my hip, the shiny-faced kindergartner, the budding adolescent, I can't wish back any of those days...because I wouldn't have missed the ones that came after for the world.

I suspect that will be true of what's on the horizon as well. I suspect that I will be as unreservedly happy to see my baby moving into her first apartment as I was the first day she didn't look back before walking through the doors to school.

I'm pretty sure.

But, I don't know what it looks like. And I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in that, so I thought I'd share the journey.