Splashing

I recently spent several days at the beach with my daughter and her best friends. This was the spring break of their senior year, and she was only days away from turning eighteen. The days were noisy, chaotic at times, full of hair dryers, and loaded with snacks of all kinds. There were late nights of giggling, afternoons that ended with sandy feet trekking into the condo, and mornings that were quiet in the way they can only be when everyone else is asleep. And it was all glorious.

They are all standing at the edge of their lives, ready to step into futures they are designing for themselves. Conversations about clothes and music from the last few years have been replaced by discussions about college and work, about things that have decidedly become more serious. As I watch them, though, I know they are anxious to take that step without hesitation.

As a parent, watching them move toward their future also means watching them take another step away from us. That is hard and thrilling and terrifying and wonderful all at the same time. From the moment they take their first actual steps, we prepare them for the day they won’t need us anymore. Hopefully, they’ll still need us from time to time and want us to be around. But for their entire lives, we have been working to prepare them for these moments.

During those days with the girls, I kept thinking about my own girlfriends from high school. I suppose it’s hard not to, given the circumstances. I vividly remember the feeling of approaching high school graduation and the excitement I felt – excitement we all felt. It seemed that nothing could stand in the way of us doing exactly the things we had planned.

Life, of course, doesn’t always work out that way. The red carpet to adulthood we expect sometimes turns out to be filled with potholes and frayed edges. We still get there, but not always as smoothly as we’d hoped or assumed.

There were moments during that week at the beach when I wanted to grab the girls and tell them to stop – to just wait for a minute. To tell them that some days were going to be more difficult than they could ever imagine, and that some nights would feel endless and dark. I wanted to warn them about the illnesses they would pray for each other through, about relationships that end before the happily-ever-after arrives as promised.

But I didn’t. Instead, I laughed along with them when they shared funny stories and encouraged them when they talked about what they wanted to accomplish. I told them I hope they’ll be friends forever, and I meant it. I also told them they’ll have other friends outside this group, and that’s wonderful, too.

They will make other friends – ones who don’t know the other girls, ones who have something else in common with them besides high school, band, and spring break. But they will never have friends like each other. They will never have friends that know that on such a deep level, because those friends won’t have been there through these significant years of transitioning from little girls to young women – and all the highs and lows that come with that.

I think about all of this when I look at them because I’ve lived it. Those last days of high school with my friends feel almost idyllic now. From this distance, the things I may have been worried about have fallen away, leaving only sunshine and blue skies.

There were things to worry about, of course – not all in the year after high school, or even in the years immediately following. There were bitter disappointments for us, too much sadness to recount, and rough sailing at times. But there were also glorious moments beyond anything our eighteen-year-old selves could have imagined. Days when we wondered if we could really be experiencing something so wonderful. Children – and now grandchildren – who filled our lives in ways we never knew were possible. Decades of marriage among us taught us to appreciate each year as it came. And the fact that my friends and I are still friends after all these decades is one of the great blessings of my life.

All the time we’ve been friends, since our ages were marked in single digits, we’ve never argued with each other, never said a cross word. And if you believe that, I’ve got a few other things I can sell you. Of course, there were times when each of us believed the friendship was over – done, kaput. But those moments are fleeting. And the farther behind you they get, the less clearly you remember them, until you begin to wonder whether they ever really happened at all.

I tell my daughter this to prepare her for a lifetime of friendship. Like any relationship, friendships evolve over time, just as people do while navigating life. Their interests will change. Their time will be claimed by new careers, new families, and new friends – often without acknowledging the history they share.

I want her to be ready to give her friends the support they’ll need, whether in celebration or in sorrow. Because she will need that same support in her own moments.

It’s sobering to realize that these are the friends she’ll turn to when she can’t turn to me anymore. There will come a day when one of them shares a story about me – maybe about this spring break trip to the beach – to help her remember who I was and how much I loved her.

That’s the way life is, the way it’s supposed to be. My friends and I have done that countless times for each other, and I pray we continue to do so for the rest of our lives.

As I watched the girls run down the beach toward the sapphire-colored water, I could hear them laughing and shouting with a joy reserved only for moments like this – when their futures are rolling out in front of them. Like the ocean they were splashing into, their futures are endless, colorful, and full of adventures they can’t yet imagine.

I can’t wait to watch them splash all the way into their lives. My friends and I are a little farther out now, swimming more quietly, only occasionally splashing as we watch all the activity coming our way. We could tell them about all the things that slowed our progress to this place – but we won’t. We’ll love them and we’ll encourage them, every step of the way.