Of roots and wings, kites and strings – and kids

    My wife and I recently escorted our 17-year-old daughter Amanda to Washington, D. C., to begin her freshman year at Howard University. Prior to our departure for the return trip, she had never been away from us for longer than a couple of weeks, so leaving her to begin this next chapter in her life (and our lives, as well) was naturally fraught with a mixture of apprehension and excitement.
    Our apprehension was ratcheted up a few degrees by a couple of things Amanda told us even before her mom and I left Washington to come back home. She reported that practically the first question her new roommate had asked her, while they were moving into their dorm room, was “Do you like to party?” – in eager anticipation of an affirmative response.
    She also told us that an upperclassman, placed in a position of prominence by the university, had given priority to telling the incoming freshmen where they could buy liquor near campus without being carded for proof of age.
    We probably should have breathed a sigh of relief that our daughter chose to confide these things to us, obviously expecting us to share her sense of disapproval. She clearly assumed that we, as a family, share a system of values that would regard her roommate’s question and the informational tidbit offered by “Mr. Howard” as evidence of something askew in their outlook on life.
    A familiar quotation attributed to Hodding Carter says, “There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings.” What Jennifer and I are experiencing – as we progressively relinquish our precious daughter to the brave new worlds of college and our nation’s capital – is the unavoidable tension that arises when a child tests the depth of her roots in the soil of faith, even as she tests her wings in the exhilarating, yet terrifying air of a new environment and a new stage in life.
    As I pondered this, an old metaphor came back to me. In one of my first student preaching assignments from my seminary days, I employed the image of kite-flying to illustrate the potentially positive value of tension. In order for a kite to remain airborne for any length of time, an uplifting wind and an anchoring hand are both necessary. The kite’s flight entails a certain amount of tension on the string. As parents watch their children take their first toddling steps into the world of adulthood, it is important to bear in mind that the tension thus engendered can be as positive as it is inevitable.
    Our faith-based values and convictions are the line that links us as Catholic parents to our children. Were they simply to cut that tie, they might briefly remain aloft on the strong winds of contemporary mainstream culture, but sooner or later they would come crashing back to earth.
    Amanda’s choice to confide in us her roommate’s question and the “words of wisdom” shared by the nominal “Mr. Howard” were evidence of positive tension at work. She thus attested the presence and the value of the string that keeps her connected to us.
    Looking back now, the not-quite-18 years that Jennifer and I have had in which to imbue our daughter with our Catholic faith seem but the blink of an eye. I can’t help but hearken back to times when I perhaps paid less-than-full attention to her questions, or to her other ways of seeking my parental attention – the concrete affirmation of my love for her. Amanda’s absence is a poignant reminder that love is the most potent weapon in the arsenal of faith; perhaps the only one. It is the material of which that kite string is fashioned, and if the string is strong enough, it can withstand the tension imposed on it by the stiffest winds of an often-hostile secular culture.
    I now recognize, more clearly than ever before, that if we are to convey to our children that there is no better place to be than under the gaze of the One whose “eye is on the sparrow” – the Three-in-One of whom John said, “God is love”– then our gaze upon them must be unequivocally loving, even (and perhaps especially) when their actions spark our anger. And I pray that my daughter and the young kites launched by other believing parents will ultimately be borne back to the bosom of our Creator by the prevailing wind of the Holy Spirit (no strings attached).