During her high school years, her only trip abroad was a “cultural experience”: a host family in New Caledonia, which she did at the age of 15. She was so homesick that she called me crying almost every day. Staying with a local family had its cultural challenges, especially when they once skinned a deer and hung it in the garage of the house.
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But by the time she reached Year 12, travel was at the top of her agenda. Seven months after graduating from school, at the age of 18, she headed to London to complete her Australian rite of passage – the European backpacking trip.
The day we drove her to the airport, it was my turn to feel empty, with that nagging ache of impending absence. It’s like homesickness in reverse. I wasn’t ready to let go.
The anticipation of saying goodbye at the departure gate that day was far from near. I couldn’t concentrate on conversations, I worried about what she was going to make for her last lunch, and I became snappy towards my other two children. I wanted to protect my little girl from discovering the world, and yet I had consciously prepared her for this her entire life.
I wanted to cry the whole way home from the airport, but I didn’t want her younger siblings to see my pathetic coping strategies.
The irony of the moment was that I had inflicted the same pain on my own parents when, at 19, I went to Athens for a year to work as a nanny for an American family. When my own mother felt loss, she deflected it by writing me regular letters throughout the year, those blue, light paper aerograms filled with news from home, but above all with unconditional love.
This year abroad opened the door to the real world in my small, sheltered world.
With a mother who spoke enthusiastically of her formative year in Greece and a father who traveled so often for work, it was inevitable that a passion for travel would find its way into our daughter’s heart. History repeats itself, I realized.
Lesson 3: Missing out hurts
With her European trip out of the way, her plan to live in London came to fruition. With $100 in her pocket and a backpack full of summer clothes, she landed her first job in a dingy pub.
In 2013, keeping in touch with a busy 19-year-old immersed in London life required me to text her endlessly. To her credit, she was incredibly consistent and generous with texting, and I was grateful for the regular Skype calls too.
But it’s these crucial moments when the missing someone hurts the most. The death of a grandfather, her father’s 50th birthday, her sister’s school musical, a Christmas Day lunch – times of darkness and light, each overshadowed by the gentle pain of absence.
Her two younger siblings seemed to adjust and carry on with their lives. But when her calls interrupted family movie night or a game, they became angry.
A year, two bar jobs and three flatshares later, she enrolled in college, which meant a second year in London. “At least my suffering will get me a degree,” thought the martyr mother in me.
After completing her course and her UK visa expiring, she finally returned home. My pitiful mother’s heart was relieved and my family felt whole again.
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Lesson 4: I miss her, but my life is richer
Two years later, she got a job in Tanzania – an incredible opportunity for a 24-year-old. For a fleeting moment, the overprotective, selfish mother in me screamed, “It’s not safe! Tell her not to go! Convince her to stay in Australia!”
But the mother, who likes to believe she has raised her daughter to be an independent, strong and adventurous girl, silenced that cry and shared her daughter’s excitement and anticipation as she prepared to embark on a journey to a radically different life, working for an NGO school.
This farewell was made a little easier because my husband, daughter and I had already travelled together and I still had many weeks of my long-term holiday ahead of me. I was pleasantly distracted, but that couldn’t stop the nagging feeling of loss from surfacing as we hugged goodbye in a London tube station.
FaceTime, texts and regular calls were my saving grace for the next year, along with flights booked to visit. Regular connection is everything when you live so far apart and thankfully my daughter understood that.
Our reunion in Tanzania, 18 months later, was overwhelming. After a few days, as we ate in a communal kitchen with our daughter’s work colleagues at school, I finally realized: her absence was necessary. It was her way of shaping her own life.
Her absence was a lesson for me in letting go.
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