Jennifer Harris
One Hundred and Forty-One Miles
I was walking up 19th Street in Dupont Circle listening to Sinead O’Connor’s You Cause As Much Sorrow on my iPhone. She’s saved under my “Goth Alt” list, which, if you must know, is mislabeled. It’s really an indie-folk list. But sometimes I mix up words. You should see my computer files. You would think I was a spy or something. Everything is coded for stealth. I hadn’t listened to Sinead in a while. When I do, I am transported to Tucson and the 1990s. Hotel Congress on East Congress Street where I sat and bummed cigarettes from my friends, coughing and pretending to be cooler than I was. I am certain everyone has a college soundtrack. Sinead and Mazzy Star were mine.
But this isn’t about that. Instead, I realized, it’s just 4.5 months until my daughter goes to college. So there’s a correlation of facts. My soundtrack. Her soundtrack. A confluence of music and grief.
You should know I’m a Buddhist, albeit not a particularly good Buddhist, but a Buddhist, nonetheless. So when Sophie was in junior high, I thought it might be a good idea to start meditating on her departure. I’d helped these Tibetan monks for over ten years—they’d travel around the country making sand mandalas and chanting. Whenever the monks visited, they’d stay with us and talk about meditation. One of the things they taught me was to meditate on impermanence as a way to prepare myself for death. And, because my daughter’s departure for college seemed like a sort of death, I thought this was a very good idea. Get a head start. Beat the tears. I applied my very A-type way of being to the grief process.
You should know, I’m not one of those mothers who always knew they wanted to be a mother. I couldn’t relate to the idea of it in my twenties. When my now spouse, Susan, asked me if I wanted to have a baby in my thirties, I was taken aback. I hadn’t ever pictured myself as a mom. Images of my mom flashed across my mind, which was so complicated, I’d quickly think no. I don’t want to be like that. I’m not so sure about that. But then one day I was like, yes. Why not? It was an on-the-fly decision. Maybe because I was chicken. So, of course, I got pregnant on the first try.
Motherhood is a weird thing. It’s certainly the best thing I’ve ever done, but it’s still weird. Between birthing and acting like I know what I’m doing, motherhood is something of an illusion. It is terrifying. I’ve spent eighteen years holding my breath in terror that she’ll be hurt in some horrible way that is beyond my control. Based on crime rates, it’s not as paranoid as it sounds. But still. I was almost kidnapped as a child. It was 1977. We were in Birmingham, Michigan, and I walked home alone. My Brownie troop left without me. So I was trekking the mile home when this van pulled up beside me near Quarton Pond. It was an old white Ford thing, and these two guys were up front. The van stopped right by me, and a guy rolled down the window. He said he had something in the back, and didn’t I want to see it? I can’t remember what exactly he asked about, whether it was candy or a puppy. I was too petrified. Something about the guy terrified me. Of course, it was all over the news. Several kids had recently been kidnapped and killed, and there were warnings not to talk to strangers. So I ran up the next home’s walkway and was all set to pound on the front door. But the van peeled out. The tires screeched, and these teenagers who’d been hanging out in the park across the street ran over to see if I was okay. And I was. Just shaken up.
When I got home, I told my mom, but she didn’t believe me. She said, “Honey, you’ve got such an imagination! Really!”
Years later, I discovered the murderer was called the Oakland County Child Killer, and they killed at least four kids between 1976 and 1977. The case was one of the biggest police investigations in U.S. history, but the killer or killers were never caught. I spent years trying not to be alarmist or overprotective of my daughter. Finding the right balance of protectionism vs. autonomy. And now she’s going to college: 141 miles away to Bryn Mawr. The train goes from Union Station to Penn Station, so it’s not so bad. I keep telling myself that. It’s my latest mantra. If I say it enough, I might even believe it.
The monks’ meditation did not work. I do not feel prepared to say goodbye. I do not feel prepared to walk by her empty bedroom. I do not feel prepared to not see her the first thing every morning and the last thing before bed. When I meditated on her leaving, I just wound up crying, and I’m not a crier. I’d rather fix something than sit there and listen. There should be a middle ground between compassionate listening and getting down to the business of fixing things. But there’s nothing I can fix. She’s leaving. And this is how it’s supposed to be. It’s a good thing. I know that. I believe that. I do.
So I was listening to You Cause As Much Sorrow and for once, I thought not of Tucson and that vast desert, but my daughter. This amazing being who is a part of me, of me, whole and beautiful and independent. This amazing creature and all that is, as yet, unknown to her. Her own college stories. That someday she’ll have a song that will transport her back thirty-plus years, and she will pause, glance up at the clouds, and perhaps, like me, wonder how it all went by so fast.
Jennifer Harris is the author of the novel PINK (Harrington Park Press/Bold Strokes Books). Her essay “Why I Am Not A Buddhist Monk” recently appeared in Gargoyle Magazine Issue #10, and her work has also been featured in the New York Quarterly, HLLQ, Fish Stories Collective, and the anthology Power Lines (Tía Chucha Press). She is the publisher and director of JackLeg Press.