My Dad

This poem completely sums up my experience in leaving for college. My Dad sat me down, and we both cried. We both told each other we loved each other, as he recounted his memories of my youth, that seemed every day to pass faster and faster until it was gone. Gone like my diapers, and my Barbies, and my braces. Here, perhaps less poetically than my Dad, Gerald Stern describes his own goodbye. Mine was more poetic, only because it was mine.

"I wanted to know what it was like before we
had voices and before we had bare fingers and before we
had minds to move us through our actions
and tears to help us over our feelings,
so I drove my daughter through the snow to meet her friend
and filled her car with suitcases and hugged her
as an animal would, pressing my forehead against her,
walking in circles, moaning, touching her cheek,
and turned my head after them as an animal would,
watching her helplessly as they drove over the ruts,
her smiling face and her small hand just visible
over the giant pillows and coat hangers
as they made their turn into the empty highway."