Cybercolumn by Berry D. Simpson: Transition_51605

Posted: 5/13/05

CYBERCOLUMN:
Transition

By Berry D. Simpson

So, yes, it’s true. My daughter is getting married soon. I’ve known this was coming for about a year, officially; a little longer, unofficially. This is the first time I’ve been brave enough to write about it.

My official notice came last June, when we were hiking up Guadalupe Peak. Cyndi and Katie were about 100 yards up the trail ahead of Drew and me. We were just past the wooden bridge, walking along the southeast face of the peak near the summit where the mountain drops off severely into a steep cliff extending hundreds of feet down. To slip off the trail at this point would mean a tumbling slide through gravel and yucca and cactus and big, sharp rocks.

It was at this point along the hike that Drew drew up the courage to tell me he wanted to marry my daughter and wanted my permission and blessing. My first words were, “You’re a brave young man, Drew, to ask that right here beside this cliff.” He said his friends back at college had questioned whether this was the smartest place to bring it up. (Cyndi thinks I have the story all wrong. She thinks that if I’d said no, Drew would have pushed me over the edge and claimed, “Mr. Simpson’s last words before he tragically fell to his death were, ‘Yes, you can marry Katie!’” Cyndi may be right.)

I remember back when we first got these kids, these babies, we were so excited. I looked forward to those first few steps on their own.  I imagined a cute little baby tottering across the room with arms outstretched saying, “Daddy, Daddy!” No one warned me that same baby would use his new skills to sneak around the corner and out of sight and disappear in Dillard’s department store and scare us all to death. I thought our children would always walk toward us, not away from us.

I also remember driving our son Byron to Rusk Elementary for his first day at school. I expected an emotional separation, and I was trying to be strong and dependable, but Byron didn’t even want me to walk him to class. He jumped out of my car, his giant backpack in place, and trotted toward the front door, eyes pointed determinedly toward the future. He never looked back. He was gone around the corner before I had time to be brave.

About two years after that, Byron worked out a low-traffic route so he could ride his little bicycle to school. It was a long convoluted path through the quieter parts of our neighborhood and kept him away from cars and scary intersections. At first, I followed behind him in my car, but by week’s end, he was tired of my clandestine supervision and said: “I can do this myself. Stop following me.” Like that, he was gone.

By the time I finally got used to my kids riding off on their own on bicycles, they wanted to take up driving cars. While the notion of teenagers driving is pretty scary, it’s not much scarier than toddlers learning to walk. It’s exciting to watch them drive off into the future with tires screeching and CD player blaring. That is, until they turn the corner and go out of sight and don’t look back—and don’t come home on time.

In the summer of 2001, Cyndi and I put Katie on an airplane to Denmark so she could spend an ENTIRE YEAR WITHOUT COMING HOME as a Rotary Exchange Student. I handled the goodbye scene at the airport with dignity, surprised how easy it was to send her off to the other (way more liberal) side of the world. I didn’t get emotional at all until the five-hour drive home, which I had to make all by myself.

All by my self! I cried all the way home, singing the Hall and Oats song in my head, “She’s gone … .”

So, friends recently sponsored Katie’s shower, and it was a wonderful weekend. Katie and Drew were overwhelmed by the generosity—by the endorsement—of our giant Midland family. They left most of their gifts at our house since we have room to store everything. I’m not complaining about that since their new stuff is way better than ours. Especially the towels: same color as ours, but much softer.

I couldn’t be prouder of my little sweetheart girl, and I’m looking forward to this next phase of our relationship. But transitions like this are easier to write about in retrospect than they are to live through in real-time.

If I could tell Katie and Drew—and for that matter, Byron—one thing, it would be this: Life is full of new beginnings and fresh starts and transitions. They can be very exciting. Sometimes they make you cry. Just keep your eyes firmly fixed on the future and on God, and don’t disappear around the corner too fast without telling me where you are going.

Berry Simpson, a Sunday School teacher at First Baptist Church in Midland, is a petroleum engineer, writer, runner and member of the city council in Midland. 

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