Parenting with Dignity, Apparently Not Happening

The hardest part of living abroad is missing my daughter

              

Photo: Strelcius Dumitra

The hardest part of living in France is not dealing with the bureaucracy, feeling like a doofus for speaking lousy French, or living without Mexican food, but missing my daughter and granddaughter. They are my only family, and not an hour goes by that I don’t think of them. However, I seem to have raised an independent functional adult. Once, I was my daughter’s sun and moon, and now she’s moved on.

That doesn’t stop me behaving like a clingy old boyfriend who needs to get a life. I message her every morning.  Because I can’t seem to wait until a more appropriate hour, she receives my greeting at about 7:00 a.m. her time, moments after she’s dragged herself out of bed and is trying to juggle her first cup of coffee along with her opinionated four-year-old. Does anyone on earth want to hear from their mother at this hour? They do not. And yet, because I’m a clingy old boyfriend, I can’t help myself.

Some recent exchanges with my daughter:

ME: Bonjour babes!

HER: yo

ME: What's new?

HER: the usual

ME: Salut ma belle!

HER: yoyo!

ME: How's everything?

HER: same

ME: Coucou!

HER: yo

ME: Everything good there? What's new?

HER:

Like all clingy old boyfriends, I’m pathetic. I often augment these unimaginative early morning check-ins with additional inquiries. From last week: "I want to get you some cowboy boots for Christmas, what's your size again? (I know damn well what her size is, and anyway it’s April.) If I was her, I would ghost me but she can’t because I’m her mom. Also, her own precious daughter’s grandmother.

Occasionally feel guilty about having left my daughter to move to France. Then I remind myself that she’s thirty-two, a grown woman with her own lucrative business, a bunch of friends, and a good shrink. Furthermore, she’s married to a great guy with excellent bone structure and a head for finance. She and my son-in-law also live with my ex, her dad.

Starter homes in Portland begin at a half million bucks, and the only way they could afford to buy a place was to go in with her father. It’s very Italian of them – three generations under one roof! – and I hardily approve. Especially since the ex is a good guy, a homebody who loves to garden and putter around the house. He shops and cooks and even belongs to a wine club. It’s not a stretch to say that he’s the mom. As the parent who sold everything and went off to live in the south of France, I am obviously the dad. Following this logic, she already sees her mom all the time.

Do I behave this way because I live 5,497 miles away, or would I be the same clingy old boyfriend if I lived down the block? Would I embarrass myself by popping in unannounced, offering to babysit when there was no need? Would I indulge in bribery, offering to take her shopping to buy that cool leather jacket she’s been saving up for? Would I intentionally leave my phone at her place, giving me yet another excuse to drop by?

I think you know the answer.

At a recent literary event in New York, I began chatting with a young writer who’d just published a book of short stories set in the Basque country. When I told her I lived in the south of France, close to the Spanish border, we enthused about our love for this part of the world. I said the only difficult thing was that my daughter lived in Oregon. Before I could elaborate, the young writer said, “She must be relieved you live so far away!” We both laughed. Should I have been insulted? Was I giving off some kind of clingy old boyfriend vibe? More likely, she was currently dealing with her own clingy old boyfriend.

I do see my daughter once a year. In February, I teach at a writing workshop in Baja, and since I’m already “over there” (the other side of the Atlantic,) I always spend time in Portland. I stay at an over-priced hotel that has nothing much to recommend it except for an excellent indoor pool. My granddaughter loves to swim, and I can always count on the allure of the pool to snag several sublime hours of daughter-and-granddaughter time, after which I treat us all to a snack at the hotel gift shop.

Two years ago, my daughter and a friend wanted to take my granddaughter to the local mall. Because my granddaughter was born on the same day the first case of CoVid was diagnosed in Oregon, she hadn’t gotten out much. Probably against her better judgment, my daughter invited me to tag along. I was so excited I couldn’t sleep the night before. A whole afternoon with my favorite people in the world! (Plus my daughter’s friend, who was very nice.)

My granddaughter didn’t care much for the toy store, preferring instead to run up and down, making the heels of her little cowboy boots go clack-clack-clack on the faux marble floor. It was adorable, and like a loon, I ran up and down with her. Hoping to prolong the adventure, I bought us all Auntie Anne pretzels. Then some See’s candy. I would have bought anything they wanted to keep this afternoon from ending.

Finally, we drove back to my daughter’s house. My granddaughter went outside to blow bubbles for the dog, and my daughter and her friend stood around in the kitchen. Like the clingy old boyfriend I am, it took me a good five minutes to figure out they were waiting for me to leave.

In his exquisite New York Times essay on what parents can and cannot control in the lives of their children, Esai McCaulley writes, “Parenting is always an exercise in hope, a gift given to a future we cannot see to the end. At some point, if God is merciful, our children will continue forward without us, left with the memory of love shared and received.”

God willing, I’ll live long enough to see my daughter becomes her daughter’s clingy old boyfriend. Then we can share a room at the over-priced hotel with the excellent indoor pool and buy snacks to share from the hotel gift shop, together at last.

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