4. Going to Work
Katherine D. Bennett
My daughter hates to go to work. I have to say, I am shocked by her reluctance, and yet I understand this, too. I have hated going to work, but I went to work every day with a will and did everything I knew to make it meaningful. I have worked at some pretty awful jobs, and some wonderful jobs. I have worked in a salmon cannery in Alaska, I have waited tables, I have taught music, I have cleaned houses, and I have been a salesclerk in an upscale department store, just to name some of the jobs I have worked at. Still, even if I hated the job, I went and I worked hard.
Now, my daughter is a hard worker, and she is doing a good job at her work, but every morning before today, she has tried to find a reason to quit. She hems and haws. She vents. She cries like a little girl. Her face contorts into crinkly outrage and hot, frustrated tears roll down her cheeks. She reasons with me, saying she needs to find a job that means something to her. I remind her that she must take her meaning with her. She leaves angry and then turns her car around and comes back contrite to apologize for being rude to me. I wish she were as eager to go to work as she is to leave for college, but then, she values going to college much more than selling odds and ends at a discount store.
In her defense, she does go to work every day she is scheduled, and she works hard everyday, even though this isn’t what she hopes for her life. She has huge dreams full of brave-hearted deeds and deep commitment to great causes. I admire the fire she has for her dreams. I love her dreams. Part of me wants to hand her the future she dreams about on a shiny silver platter, but I can’t. I won’t take away her failures or her successes. They all belong to her.
Still, it is hard to stay out of it all and take firm stands when I want to just keep her with me. She is so young to be an adult, fresh out of high school and full of certainties. She is so much a child still to be a woman, and yet she is a woman. She can legally sign her own papers, marry whomever she pleases, and serve her country in whatever capacity she chooses. In so many ways she is ready for college, but she is not ready for life. I still wake her up in the morning, I provide her food, and keep her safe. But then, on the other hand, she does her own laundry and her share of the household chores. She takes on responsibilities and listens to my advice about money. Sometimes I have to acknowledge that she is totally ready, but I am not.
Maybe I feed into her desire not to work at her little job by being too sympathetic and listening too carefully to her objections about going every morning. Maybe I don’t want her to go to work, either. But I know, in my head, that she absolutely has to work because it is part of life, and to deprive a child of his or her struggles is to deprive him or her of triumphs of epic proportions. I have had these triumphs and failures, and the experiences shaped me and made me better and stronger. I hated the trials when they were happening, but I am thankful for them as well.
So I insist my daughter go to work, and she goes. She is proud of the money she has earned and has a little nest egg growing in the local bank. This morning she did not try to avoid it but just a little bit. She wanted to do a dozen other things, but she knew it would be time for work soon, so she did not press the point. Instead she got dressed and went with only a few sad references to the day she would rather have. I felt proud of her and sad, too. She is growing up and preparing to leave me, and I am insisting she go, though I am not nearly ready. But, it is the right thing to do. If I love her the way a mother should love her child, then I have to let her go.