And She Promptly Set Sail

'Tis the season of missing Miranda, and she'll probably see this and think, "Oh, here we go again." Don't get me wrong: I'm proud of her and happy she's happy, and recent events have taught me to be grateful that I don't need to worry about her. I just wish she were not so faraway.

I remember a summer about five years ago when I was visiting a girlfriend in Florida, and we were poking around in a consignment shop in West Palm Beach. It wasn't my kind of place. The garments were a little too sparkly, the baubles too big, and the air smelled like those sticky scented flaps in glossy fashion magazines. I was feeling very alienated, which I generally do in Florida anyway.

Then my cell phone rang, and it was Miranda. She was calling from the airport in Boston, about to head to England for a summer class at Oxford and feeling unexpectedly nervous and uncertain.

"I'm not even sure why I'm doing this," she said. "I don't know what to expect, and I won't know anyone, and I'm feeling kind of weird about the whole thing. Tell me again, why am I doing this?"

I don't remember exactly what I said. I probably reminded her that she was doing this because it was a chance to learn and stretch and travel, and she had always loved the idea of England. I was surrounded by sequin-trimmed cocktail dresses, seldom worn, and designer knits all wrong for the tropics, and Lilly Pulitzer prints.

"You're about to have a great adventure," I told her.

And she flew away to England. She promptly fell in love with the place and with a person, returned to Boston that fall to hurriedly finish her last semester, came home to California for a Christmas visit, then moved across the sea.

This is what happens, to one degree or another. I suppose you can try to squelch it, but that probably just creates a twisted result...and regret.

I have sometimes wished I'd had two daughters instead of just Miranda. The other daughter, whose name would be something like Ashley, would choose to stay local. No wanderlust or literary aspirations could ever lure that girl away from her horses or the beach or the fun of my company. (I know. She sounds boring already.)

Instead, we got this daughter who imagined something different.

It's always a mistake to think we can control someone's wishes or craft the outcomes anyway. I like to think our love for her was a sail and not an anchor.

So my fate is to miss Miranda, but in a happy kind of way, if that makes any sense.