Kavi is a little sick on her seventeenth birthday, which isn’t quite
as tragic as you might think, because it’s the week before finals
and she has too much studying to do, as do all her friends –
junior year spring has been quite stressful that way, with college looming.
“Everything I do, I think about how it will look to colleges.” Poor kid.
Besides, she says that seventeen is kind of a “nothing birthday.”
Fourteen is starting high school, fifteen is learner’s permit,
sixteen is sweet sixteen and a driver’s license, eighteen is adult.
She’ll celebrate anyway, next weekend with her friends once school is out —
they’re planning on a beach day, which sounds perfect, though I feel compelled
to reiterate that if it gets late, and if anyone is drunk or otherwise impaired,
they are not to drive, she is to CALL ME, and I will come and get them,
no questions asked, no informing other parents, I will just get them safely home.
I do not tell her that seventeen isn’t a nothing birthday for me.
Seventeen is one last year at home with her, one last year of being legally
responsible for keeping her alive (although it’s not as if we’ll stop worrying
once she’s technically an adult). One last year of helping with homework
when she starts seeming overwhelmed, of trying to make sure she eats
a vegetable at some point in the day (or eats at all), of mostly knowing who
she’s spending time with, who are her friends, who is she dating, are they safe?
It’s also one last year of her home for dinner, most nights,
of her home on the weekends with us, mostly, though already the struggle
is to remind her to keep us informed if she’ll be out, remind her
to get her homework done, in the midst of all the socializing.
Kavi has a lot of friends, which is good,
but I miss her already, and she’s still here.
Maybe she’ll stay close for college. Maybe she’ll come back after. She might.
She might not. At eighteen, I moved across the country, and never lived
in the same state as my parents again. At twenty-one, my mother moved halfway
across the world, and it was decades before her own parents moved to join her.
Seventeen is the year of anticipatory grief, but Kavi doesn’t need to know that,
not yet. Let it be a nothing year for her, full of ordinary things: friends and food
and long, lazy days at the beach, getting home at a slightly unreasonable hour.
There’s a present for her — I will try to keep my moping mostly to myself.
Happy birthday, sweetheart.
Let’s bake a cake, and do more driving practice.
Let’s keep building strength in those wings.
You’ll be ready when it’s time to fly away.
5/18/24
