First Adulting Christmas, 1983

That Christmas, I was 24 years old. I had moved across the country to San Francisco and I had my first real job as a physical therapist. I went home to New Jersey for the holidays, bearing gifts that I had purchased with my own money. I was so proud.

I gave my father a coffee press. He loved coffee and this was an intriguing gadget for him. I made a pile of crispy, melty snowflake cookies sprinkled in powdered sugar. I remember entering the house feeling so different, like I had really changed. I could buy things for my parents. I could cook for them. I could drive three thousand miles away, find employment and housing, and fend for myself.

One of the questions my father asked me most often throughout my entire life was, “How can I help you? What do you need?” It was a battle inside of me, deciding whether to say: nothing, or everything. He asked me that very question the night before he died, and I wished I had said, just live.

This holiday season, our 25-year old daughter is coming home from three thousand miles away. She has had to negotiate the huge adult tasks of not only moving to another country (eastern Canada), but driving there with a trailer full of belongings, navigating immigration and tuition payments, starting graduate school, dealing with rent and phone service, car registration and the million other tasks that come with living independently. She’s fending for herself, and our college senior is on the verge as well.

When our daughters come home now, we’re the ones counting the days and hours, waiting to greet them, astonished and awed.