by Kathy Soltani

Created on: January 13, 2009

My daughter moved out today. She told her father and I that she had to go because life with us was just unbearable. She cited our inability to understand her and our inflexible nature as the causes for her decision to leave. "You just don't get it!" she shouted. "I am my own person and I can do what I want!" Storming off to her room, she made her exit preparations. We were shocked. What had we done to cause this drama? Well, it seems that the problem was that we had rules and expectations.

Yes. We had rules and these were unacceptable barriers to our daughter's happiness. Imagine her chagrin at having a 2 am curfew. Imagine the insult caused by our insistence that she have a part time job. Imagine the emotional damage we caused her by expecting her to take her dog out and keep a decent grade point average in school. What were we thinking? How could we have so burdened our child? Now we would reap our reward for all of our evil-doing. She was leaving to live her own life.

Thirty minutes later, she bounded down the stairs carrying the first in a series of plastic lawn bags, crammed with her clothes and art supplies. She placed these on the front porch where they would soon be joined by boxes of books, her laptop and baskets of essentials like concert ticket stubs and stuffed animals. The fact that she was starting her new life with nothing more than dirty laundry, trinkets and twenty-seven dollars seemed to escape her. She was all caught up in the moment. She was showing us.

An hour later and she was gone. Her new found independence took her all the way to her boyfriend's house, where she could be happy. We didn't know when we would hear from her again. As loving parents we were worried. We felt we had failed. We needn't have been so concerned. She called an hour later.

"So, Mom? You know that I'm going to keep going to school, right?" I commended her on her initiative and asked if that was the only reason she had called. She explained to me that she was calling to make sure that I understood that her tuition needed to be paid before the end of the business day. I was amused. "And you think that I'll be paying that?" I asked. I informed her that I would only pay tuition for people living in my house. She was dumbstruck. "Well, what am I supposed to do?" she whined. I told her that I was sure that as an independent adult, she would make all the right decisions for herself. I reminded her that she had found her lifestyle in our home to be too stifling and that in her new found freedom she would have to find alternative ways to finance her education. She hung up on me.

For the next two days, she called every few hours. It seems that the boyfriend didn't have cable TV or a car. She couldn't walk to her gym and was wasting her membership. There was no reliable wireless connection and she couldn't blog on her Myspace to entertain her friends with the story of her emancipation. She was bored. She missed her dog. She told me that I wouldn't believe how hard it was to find work. She was running out of money, having unwisely spent a few dollars on take out food. When I reminded her that this suffering was nothing compared to the glory of her autonomy, she hung up on me again.

It's been about ten days since my daughter moved out of my house. I have listened to her complaints and have sent her boxes of mac and cheese and the trolley schedule so she can get herself to interviews. I have reassured her that she is loved and wanted by her family. I have told her that my door is always open and that she can come home whenever she wants as long as she understands that the rules will still apply. She hung up on me again. It's okay though. I'm expecting another call from her any minute.

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