By Jagdesh Singh | Opinion |
I laid awake, not wide but in that twilight zone where my thoughts were swirling around my mind having their own heated Q&A session. My inner voice tells me the hours are running fast as the day approaches rapidly. My elder two, young ladies at the cusp of being two decades old, will be going halfway around the globe the next day, all too soon. 24 hours left before they flew off.
I wasn’t worried about them navigating through such a long-haul flight all by themselves. It was too expensive for either me or my better half, their mother, to follow them and provide moral support. I was, however, worried about missing them terribly when they’re both living halfway around the world from me.
I am very attached to my daughters, no shred of doubt about that.
As young adults, they’ve both been given opportunities to spread their wings in alien lands. It would be selfish of me not to allow them to do this. Even though I wished they would be in our home every night for a few more years.
The day arrived at warp speed. Before we knew it, both me and my wife were hugging both of them teary eyed. The dread that made me lay awake 24 hours earlier hadn’t lessened one bit.
I suspect the quietness at the dining table or in the kitchen will be deafening for me. The conversations we have had, the arguments that the neighbours could hear, the lectures I gave, the shrieks of laughter when I deny anything with my stupid defence, the tears of realisation when they learn life’s hard lessons, the consoling. This noise will soon be considerably volumed down.
Now, two days since they walked in the airport terminal, the dread has subsided effectively masked by the excitement of their adventure so far. New friends, new environment, new culture albeit not so alien after all. I’m thankful for modern technological tools to communicate with them, to see them and hear their voices clearly.
The realisation that they needed to experience this, allowing them to spread their wings and tumble around clumsily far away from their nest, has dawned upon me.
The dining table isn’t as quiet as I dreaded it to be. There’s still the growing voice of our youngest, now finding herself and discovering her own character that had always been buried in all the teenager noise from her elder sisters. Now, she has all the attention she has been screaming for as a child to create her own teenager noise.
She will have her own arguments at the dining table. She will learn to be vocal about her dreams and nightmares, just like her sisters. We will learn to adapt our lectures now to be more relevant with her times.
We will be there for it! Whoever designed this path for us, I am sincerely thankful for our youngest daughter being here at this crucial time when the empty nest syndrome I had dreaded would be remediated quite a bit.
Jagdesh Singh, a Kuala Lumpur-based executive with a US multinational company, is a father of three girls who are as opinionated as their mother
* This is the opinion of the writer, organisation or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Asia Samachar.
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