Plumbing

Annika turns 17 tomorrow. Like all birthday’s after 50 years of age, this one puts me in a contemplative mood…

Before more sophisticated marketing took over, at Cisco we used to say we were the plumbing of the Internet. Meaning, just like your toilets and sinks and showers, no one saw where the water went but it was pretty damned important and had better work. Same with digital traffic: no one has a clue where it goes and how it gets there, but it had better damned well work.

Annika is turning 17 and entirely (just as I was at 17) looking forward, looking ahead, expecting adventure and fun and most of all independence when she leaves home on her own for the first and last time in 18 months.

Me? Parenting is a lot like plumbing (well, not really, but stay with me), and I’m looking back at all the plumbing that Annika never saw (it’s all about perspectives) or forgot (too young). There’s surely bad plumbing to be found – when I didn’t give my full attention, when I was impatient, when I was absent, when I was simply wrong. But along the way I did get it right some of the time, and I had front row seats watching Annika (and Niki, and Britta) fall (physically, emotionally, everything), get up, succeed, fail again, hesitate, succeed…on and on. At each step I was celebrating her development, her accomplishment, her graduation…and as years went by these moments came fewer and further between, mostly due to age (we have less physical challenges at 15 than we had at 5) and the intangible (the High School challenges are as much interpersonal, which I apparently can’t help with).

I remember…

– Going from a bottle, so a sippy cup, to her own cup, to pouring her own glass
– Going from lying to crawling to standing to walking to running
– Going from diapers, to underwear, to dressing herself
– Going from hanging on the monkey bars, to 1 bar at a time, to every other hand, to skipping a bar entirely
– Going from the toddler swing to the regular swing being pushed (but not too high!) to being pushed higher to not needing to be pushed at all
– Going from a push bike, to a 2 wheel bike, to no hands
– Going from no homework, to weekly homework with help, to weekly homework with no help, to daily homework with help, to daily homework with no help
– Going from level 2 (gymnastics) to 3, to 4, to 5, to 7
– Going from no opinion to hesitant preferences to “my way or the highway”
– Going from a baby to a toddler to a little girl to a young lady to a young woman

And of course, sadly but expectedly, I remember going from having a vital role in her life to have an important role in her life to being a convenience in her life to being a forced necessity in her life to…well, being an option in her life.

That’s good; it’s a sign of progress, of maturity, of testing independence, of falling down and getting back up all on one’s own.

But you know…on the eve of her 17th Birthday…what I wouldn’t give to have one more spring day at Common’s Beach with my little girl, as we stop going to the indoor Rideout play area and begin to enjoy the warm weather, longer days, and getting on those monkey bars one more time. And Annika looks at me and I think…I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.

P.S. These contemplations are due to Annika’s 17th birthday, but my thoughts here extend to all you girls. Being your Papa has been the most rewarding experience of my life, and while I have failed you all more times than you know I was always trying to pay attention to those failures, to make them less often….