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One of our goals as parents was to help our daughters, Juniper and Amanda, achieve maturity and independence. We worked toward that goal through all the years we enjoyed living together as a close family, with most of our education guided by our family, by all of us working toward knowledge and wisdom together.
When Juniper and Amanda did go into the world on their own, Laura and I were ready, because that was the fulfillment of what we’d been working toward. Well, in truth, I was more ready than Laura was. Maybe that was partly because of some differences in the emotions of a mother and a father. Maybe it was partly because I knew deep in the area where all knowledge resides in me that the need for adventures on their own stirred early in our daughters.
When Juniper was twelve years old, we sat by the barn in sunshine and talked about cabbages and kings, mundane requirements of everyday living and events that moved the world. Juniper said, “I think it’s time for me to leave here and be on my own now. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, and now I’m ready.”
I asked her, “Are you mad at your mother and me?”
She looked surprised. “No. Why would I be mad at anybody?”
“Well. People run away from home if they’re mad at their parents or if they’re being treated badly.”
“Oh. Well, I’m not talking about running away. It’s just time for me to be on my own now.”
I said, “I see,” and I thought I did. We read a lot in our family. Juniper and Amanda had been reading, and Laura and I had been reading to them, and Juniper and Amanda had been reading to us. A large part of our reading was about adventure, where someone set off to find adventure and to make his or her own way in the world, from Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows, C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, through many books to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. Age didn’t make much difference in one’s readiness to seek adventure in books of fiction. Why should it make much difference in real life? For twelve years, Juniper had learned about the world and gained maturity. In her concepts of the world and of herself, it was time to put everything she had learned to work by seeking her independence and her own adventures.
Some time before she made the decision to leave home, she had proven she could be independent from her family by spending one day at the barn, about a hundred yards from the house, by herself. She packed a lunch, took a couple of books in case she got bored, went to the barn, and didn’t come back until dark.
I did go over once during the day, ostensibly to split kindling, but really to see how she was doing, but that was from my need, not from any expressed need of hers. It was quite clear she was doing fine and didn’t need me to check on her. The day never got above 15 degrees, even with the sun shining. The apple she had in her lunch froze, and she knew the coldness added to the depth of her achievement. We all agreed afterward that summer adventures are easier than winter adventures.
She had also had many other adventures in Whitney Valley, where we lived, usually with Amanda, but sometimes by herself, climbing trees, exploring down by the river and over in the sagebrush across the graveled road from our house, sometimes for hours at a time without returning to the house.
When she announced that she was ready to leave home and go out on her own, I could have said, “You’re not going to do that,” and effectively ended the discussion. Juniper would have complied with my authoritarian pronouncement, but I didn’t want to approach it that way.
I said, “You could do that. I’m sure you’re mature and independent enough, but the world isn’t ready for you.”
Juniper asked, “What do you mean?”
“A person as young as you are would run into lots of interference trying to travel alone, trying to make her own way in the world. You would get stopped by police, who would assume you were a runaway. They would keep you from going anywhere until we were contacted. Police and lawyers would want the best of the world for you, but they would probably cause trouble for us, because we let you go and weren’t taking care of you. There are laws against children working, so it might be hard to earn a living. Probably no one would rent you a house or a room or anywhere you could live because most people would think you were too young to be on your own.”
“Oh. I didn’t think about any of that, because I didn’t know it. I didn’t know people would interfere. I didn’t know they would cause trouble for you and Mom.”
We were quiet for a while, deep in thought, sitting in sunshine on a bench that ran along part of the big wooden cattle chute leading out from the corrals.
Then Juniper asked me, “How old do you have to be to be on your own and not have those problems?”
“Usually eighteen.”
“Oh. Okay.” She adjusted to her new knowledge quickly, without apparent disappointment. She was mostly content to be a home schooled twelve year old girl on a ranch in Northeastern Oregon, still learning, with many satisfying adventures close at hand and with a supportive family. We all went on preparing for our daughters’ emergence into the world of independence.
Juniper’s independent adventures in the world began before she was eighteen, but when she was really ready. She became a counselor-in-training at a summer camp in the mountains, where she stayed, then a counselor and handler of horses, then a teacher of horsemanship. We saw her enough to maintain a strong sense of family. She traveled to a distant college got a degree, and adventured out into the world of independence, working for newspapers, then nannying, then teaching, then, most recently, thinking about more advanced degrees and where they might lead her.
Amanda lingered at home longer, since she is two years younger, but then she went off into the world pursuing her own paths of adventure, also got a college degree, went to work in libraries and then bookstores and eventually married.
Our daughters continue to expand their knowledge of the world and their adventures. In all their adventures, they know they have the support of their family.
When Juniper and Amanda went from their family into the world, they were ready, and the world was ready for them, for their learning and their teaching, which continue now and stretch into their adventure-filled future.
About the author: For essays, poems,
and books by this author visit his wonderful web site:
http://www.remmerde.com
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