I am up before dawn. My daughter is about to leave the U.S. for a couple of weeks on an all expenses paid program to another country, part of a sponsored cultural exchange.
She will live with a family, converse in the language of the land, and experience the solitude and growth that accompanies this type of experience.
I am extremely proud of her. She'd applied and been selected for a competitive program, and now she was a little nervous.
Independent travel has been one of life's great pleasures, and it cultivates skills that translate to other facets of personal and professional well-being. There's something deeply empowering about stepping off a plane when you don't speak the language and don't know where you'll spend the night, and yet feel confidence that you have the skills to make it work out.
My kids are vaguely aware of their good fortune. We opted to live in a bubble that's good for safety and education, at the cost of being untethered from reality. They are just beginning to realize that the six foreign stamps in their passports are uncommon badges of experience in their cohort.
Which brings me to this morning. My wife and I are hugging our daughter farewell at the airport. My kid is visibly nervous, fingernails bitten to shreds. One of the aspects of this program that I love is that on arrival the kids will hand over their devices for the duration of the stay.
She verbalizes the fear that she'll be lonely, that she'll miss the immediacy of communicating with us, that isolation will be unavoidable. Starting in the pandemic, when physical proximity was constrained, this has been her experience of connectedness.
She's not wrong. Solo travel is a lonely experience, but it also affirms self-sufficiency. This is the gift I hope she gleans from electronic abstinence - that intellectual engagement with different cultures is a source of connection.
The ability to form an immediate bond with someone from a different culture is an essential life skill. In my life, I've discovered it singing John Denver songs with enthusiastic elders in a park despite not sharing a language; over a shared meal on a bus in rural Yunnan province.; and while performing a disappearing coin trick for a dazzled toddler whose mother thanked me for disrupting his tantrum.
As an ER doc who asked people about their sexual habits within minutes of meeting them for the first time, I can attest that this skill was invaluable professionally.
I can't wait for my kid to discover that she has the gift. I can't wait to hear what she does with it.
So my wife and I encourage, reassure, share our deep pride in living vicariously through her adventures. And, slowly, she passes the security check and takes the escalator up a level, waving goodbye for one last time before she disappears from sight.
When she is no longer visible, my wife lets the tears have their way. My eyes grow damp. This is a rehearsal, unintended, for the day she will leave us.
We stand in the airport, holding one another, trying not to imagine what we cannot help but imagine at this moment.