Eight Weeks
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-Eight weeks- were the only two words that jumped out at me from my phone screen as I read the email from school this morning. Eight weeks is the exact amount of time that the school gives us as a final opportunity to settle any outstanding school-related matters, as it's also eight weeks until my daughter achieves another great milestone in her life: graduating from high school.
It seems as though it was only eight weeks ago that I graduated myself. A moment etched in my memory, where on a sunny day in Mexico City, I received my diploma alongside ninety classmates dressed in black robes and mortarboards. A document that officially marked the end of a stage in our lives. As we threw our hats into the air with all our might, we bid farewell to our childhood and welcomed back the cap as adults of the world, or so we thought.
Every memory comes with a song, and the soundtrack that accompanied us during that triumphant moment was not just one song, but two. Two completely different songs that coincided on the same theme, not wanting to let go. The first was a children's song in Spanish that spoke of not wanting to cry, not wanting to say goodbye, not wanting to grow up anymore, and the second showed a strong desire to freeze time and stay that way, Forever Young.
Eight weeks also seem like the time that has passed since I held a baby in my arms on an unusually cold and snowy December day in 2004, filled with hope. How is it that those same eight weeks are now the ones remaining until high school ends? The passage of time is deceptive. It passes, but it doesn't, and suddenly it goes by too quickly, and sometimes, for moments, it stops again. Deep down in my heart, I want these eight weeks to pass slowly, very slowly, as Julieta Venegas would say, but without stopping altogether, just slowing down its speed, but not its intensity.
Today, I experience these eight weeks from a new and uncertain bicultural place. I'm reaching that moment that we inevitably knew would come when we decided to call the United States our home. In this life in a foreign country, there have been cultural differences that have shaken my soul, but my children leaving home to go to college in another city is undoubtedly the strongest of them all.
With this inevitable physical distance, the most important thing for me will be to maintain the bond I have with her. A bond that was born that December. A bond that has grown and transformed many times. A bond that strengthens every time I share my stories with her.
When my daughter was in kindergarten and came to tell me about some conflict with her friends, she loved hearing the story of my famous friend Marina, who, after pulling each other's hair during several recesses, became my best friend for years. In elementary school, my daughter also loved hearing stories about my dear neighbor Claudia. A childhood where I eagerly awaited the shout from one backyard to another every afternoon to see each other, not only to perfect our Nadia Comaneci routine on the swings at her house, but also to conspire for hours about how we would set up our first lemonade stand on that beloved corner of Monte Líbano. When one day, leaving her in the kindergarten classroom, my daughter asked me not to kiss her in front of everyone, I told her about the day I let go of my dad's hand when entering school in front of my friends. When I saw her nervous before going to a dance, I told her about the time my dress ripped just as I got out of my date's car upon arriving at the party hall, and our laughter relaxed us. Today, as she tells me how much she will miss her high school friends, I share with her that they will always hold a very special place in her heart.
However, I feel like in eight weeks, I will run out of stories. Her college stories will be completely different from mine. I want to think that these differences will make our conversations even richer, and that we will have fun finding their intersections. However, it is strange to think that despite having lived different childhoods, it is the first time she will enter a school stage so foreign to the one I experienced. Surely, even more different experiences and ways of living will come, but this is the first evident one, and it brings with it a strange feeling.
In eight weeks, my daughter will receive that same diploma, and she will officially write the last sentence of the chapter titled High School in the book of her life. Now it will be her turn to toss that graduation cap high in the air, but never saying goodbye to that girl who approaches life with a wonderful capacity for wonder and a noble heart. I hope her graduation songs also have a touch of melancholy, because that's life, we must feel it and go through it. However, I hope that nostalgia doesn’t stay there, and she receives this new stage full of amazing songs, the ones that make you want to sing at the top of your lungs.
When I opened that email and read -eight weeks-, I thought I also had pending issues to finalize and problems to solve, but I don't. I simply want to fill these eight weeks with hugs, kisses, conversations, and thousands of more stories, all intertwined in a tangle of memories and new experiences.
