The Oldest
About an hour before Cana’s graduation started on Sunday evening, I had this really strange feeling wash over me, sitting in the stands at Kuesel Stadium. Not sadness exactly. Not even nostalgia in the way people usually mean it.
It honestly felt more like I had accidentally stepped into someone else’s life. Like there had been some sort of glitch.
The football field at Mariemont High School was filling up slowly. Families carrying flowers and cameras, and grandparents trying to figure out where they were supposed to sit. Janitors were wiping off chairs as rain drizzled down, hoping the clouds would clear in time for graduates in white dresses, blue robes, and dress clothes to file out of the gym and onto the turf field.
And then, out of nowhere, I was back in the hospital. Not metaphorically. I mean vividly.
The Landgrebe family had brought ice cream by the room a day or so after Cana was born, and little Chris Landgrebe was very concerned that this twenty-hour-old baby should probably get some ice cream because, in his mind, everyone liked ice cream, and therefore, babies probably did too.
My dad had driven down (with my mom and brother) to meet his first granddaughter straight from the field that first night. Still in his work clothes. Maybe some dirt on his boots. Tired in the way farmers always look tired but never talk about. We had the audacity to have a baby in May, and it was planting season. But I just remember the pride on his face holding her, my mom beaming beside him.
I hadn’t thought about either of those memories in years.
Then, suddenly, I was watching Cana wander through the woods behind the Hermitage Club, carrying stacks of books because, for her, homeschooling mostly turned into self-directed exploration with occasional math interruptions.
She would disappear into the woods for hours.
At some point, she built a lean-to back out there and basically turned it into a woodland reading nook. Which honestly tracks pretty well for her personality now that I think about it.
Then came fashion. Not in the normal little-kid dress-up way. In the deeply specific and mildly intense Cana way.
I started laughing to myself because I suddenly remembered “The Pink Squid,” which may have been her earliest true fashion project. She had commissioned Poochie to sew this Halloween costume with extremely detailed requirements around sleeve dimensions, color, fit, and overall shape. There was no ambiguity permitted. Creative direction was clear. Expectations were high.
Honestly, Parsons Paris probably should have accepted her immediately based on that alone. And all of these memories just kept stacking on top of each other while I sat there waiting for graduation to start.
Hospital room.
The woods.
Fancy Nancy.
The Pink Squid.
Homemade plays on the concrete hearth.
Learning to wakeboard.
Late-night conversations.
Experiencing her humor in her own specific way.
Experiencing her becoming brave.
Experiencing her becoming her.
Then suddenly the music started, and I looked down, and there was this stunning eighteen-year-old woman walking onto the field in Christian Louboutin heels like she owned the place.
Which, to be fair, she kind of did.
And I could not shake the feeling that somebody had accelerated time without asking permission first.
I know this is not a unique human experience. Parents have been doing this forever. Literally forever.
Children leave home. That is the deal.
In fact, it’s one of the oldest rituals we have. One generation releasing the next generation into the world to build lives and homes and stories of their own. I understand this intellectually. But sitting there Sunday night, it suddenly stopped being theoretical.
I found myself thinking a lot about leaving home myself.
About being eighteen and heading to Miami University feeling mostly excitement. Freedom. Independence. Possibility. I don’t think I had even the slightest understanding of what that moment felt like for my parents.
Not because I was selfish. Just because that’s how youth works.
You are so appropriately consumed with becoming yourself that you rarely stop to consider what the transition costs the people who loved you first.
Before graduation, we were all at the house for dinner.
Cana had requested homemade pasta, which feels extremely on-brand. Equal parts sophisticated and comforting. I had chosen to be Clark Griswold and try my best to make it perfect, even though a day of making homemade pasta, sauce, and bread is likely too much to take on, given all the other circumstances. Also on brand.
The whole family was there.
At one point, I was in the kitchen cleaning up with Mom and Dad after dinner when I suddenly realized I needed to say something out loud.
So I told them that when I was eighteen, I honestly don’t think I understood how hard that moment probably was for them.
And now I do.
Or at least I’m beginning to.
Mom and I cried a little.
Dad, in perhaps the most Dad move imaginable, let the moment exist for approximately fourteen more seconds before changing the subject entirely (which was probably the right leadership move for the kitchen at that time).
But I hope they know how grateful I am for the way they handled that season of life.
They let me leave.
Not emotionally. Not relationally. But truly. They gave me room to become myself.
They supported me while also allowing my life to become my own story instead of a continuation of theirs. And now, standing in that exact same transition point with Cana, I appreciate that gift in an entirely different way.
A few days before graduation, Cana said something that made me laugh because it was both funny and very her. She said something along the lines of:
“Dad, if you grew up in this community, graduating from high school is not really something you celebrate. It’s just expected.”
She’s not entirely wrong. The actual diploma itself is not really the point. This isn’t about completing enough coursework to satisfy the state of Ohio. It’s about what the moment symbolizes.
Western culture has very few meaningful transition markers left. Very few moments when we collectively stop and acknowledge that someone is moving from one stage of life into another. And graduation, for all its clichés and ceremony and awkward seating arrangements, still manages to do that.
It marks the end of childhood. Or maybe more accurately, it marks the beginning of adulthood while a little bit of childhood still remains, which feels true to real life (at least for those who chose to let a little bit of childhood never leave them).
I am immensely proud of you, Cana.
Proud of the woman you are becoming.
Proud of the way you move through the world.
Proud of the relationship you have built with Mom and me, and separately with each of your siblings.
Proud that you are brave enough to pursue something you genuinely love by moving to Paris to study fashion at Parsons.
That takes courage, especially today, as there are far “easier” ways to build a life than by pursuing something artistic, uncertain, and deeply personal. But I know for certain that meaningful, improbable lives require some version of that leap. And while it will absolutely feel strange not having her in the house every day, I take a tremendous amount of comfort in one particular thought.
I think Rachel and I succeeded in the thing we were actually trying to do all along.
Not perfectly obedient children.
Not perfectly curated outcomes.
Not little extensions of ourselves.
We were trying to raise adults with whom we would enjoy lifelong, loving relationships.
Adults who knew they were deeply loved and therefore could go on to love each other and other people well, and who would contribute something meaningful to whatever communities they entered.
And if my hunch is right, that’s what happens next.
Not an ending.
A transition.
I don’t lose my daughter when she leaves for Paris in August.
I gain an adult friend for the rest of my life, who will teach me more than I could ever imagine.
Which feels like an extraordinary reward for surviving the weird, exhausting, beautiful experiment called parenthood.
Happy graduation, Cana. I love you.
PS: Cana writes on Substack too, and this piece she wrote back in January called “The Oldest” feels particularly appropriate this week. I loved it then, and I love it even more now.