And Then There Were Two

Our family friends caught us as we were backing out of our driveway last night. Their 16-year-old had a little going-away gift for ours. Watching them pull away in their Honda Accord, it struck me as new and odd that both our households are evolving similarly. As we drove out of the neighborhood in our Toyota Camry, I texted my friend: "Wow! We've both downsized from minivans to sedans!" On the same day we each had children moving out, leaving just two youngest children at each home.

Madelyn moved out less than two weeks ago. She found--on her own!--a private room to rent in a condo with two other roommates. In eleven days, it has been good to see the gradual changes that having her own place is affecting. She has signed up for a weekly LDS institute class, while also discovering that Tuesday evenings alone in an apartment are boring until that class starts. She hopes to borrow some of her siblings' creativity to decorate her space. I smiled last night when she removed the small stack of mail that has been accumulating for four months in her clipboard here at home. Suddenly, she is not only aware of mail, but is ready to tackle the reminder from the dentist to set an appointment, and the other bills and tasks that await. What makes me smile more is that when she does come home for a family gathering, she is talkative and affectionate and genuinely happy to be with us. The stresses of senior year let us see mostly her worn-out side, so I am grateful our home is no longer the place for her to just decompress and sleep. We like her and she likes us again too!

Two households each lose a new adult. We love these besties!

#3 moved out more recently. It's been about six hours since we watched her walk away with her luggage at the airport, and now I'm awake in the wee hours of the morning feeling just a little unsettled until I know she is settled.

Ticket in hand, the world is her school.

Last fall, #3 talked about possibly being a foreign exchange student. Being unwilling to do all the work for her, I gave her some websites to check out. She procrastinated, so I figured it was only a passing interest. Well, that interest came back last spring, at which point we learned that it was way too late to apply for a foreign exchange program or student visa for this school year. But we are out-of-the-box thinkers. #3 knew she wanted to learn Spanish, and, as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we have a lot of connections to Spanish-speaking countries. Most young men, and many young women, in our church serve proselyting missions wherever they are asked to go in the world. Additionally, Provo has a high concentration of Hispanic people. We reached out to our friends and family, asking them to reach out to their friends and family in Spanish-speaking countries to see if anyone would be willing to host our daughter for the school year. We figured we would have to cast our net wide to find someone willing and able. There were friends of friends in Spain, Argentina, and Chile who wished they could help us. And then, there were three families in Colombia who said they would open their homes to #3. Ironically, our contact to Colombia did not serve a mission there and is not Hispanic. Our friend, Samantha, works at ACHF with Kent. She is an adventurer like our #3. In her twenties, Sam similarly wanted to be immersed in a country where she could learn Spanish. She asked her past host family if they knew anyone with kids who might have room for one more, adding that we were hoping to do a true exchange if they had a teen who wanted to come to the USA. Two families volunteered to take #3, and we had some FaceTime with them. Then, Samantha's Colombian "dad" mentioned our request at a church leadership meeting. The LDS stake president in that meeting said that just a day or two prior, his own 17-year-old daughter (who has the same name as our #3!) had expressed her desire to go to America to learn English. This was an amazing connection, too perfect to be coincidence--God's hand is in it.

The more we have communicated with this family, the more I feel they are our Colombian dopplegangers. The first time we FaceTimed with them, I noticed the wall they sat in front of looked like the cedar-clad wall in our family room. When we spoke last week, we all laughed when the video came up and Kent and I were wearing essentially the same outfits as Andres and Tania. They have four daughters, similar in ages to ours, and one new son-in-law. They're just missing the surprise baby boy at the end. They hold family scripture study time, have dinners together as often as possible, and Tania takes a big role in her children's education, homeschooling for several years.

A few weeks into our friendship with this family, they told us that their daughter's twin didn't want to be without her sister for a school year, and they wondered if she could also come to the U.S. With two children moving out, we certainly had room to take both. However, it's been discouraging to see that our country is not nearly as welcoming of Colombia's travelers as they are of us. It's a complicated and long process to get these girls to our home, not to mention getting them an educational experience when they are finally allowed to come. It looks like we will have to wait a few months until they are 18 before they can travel here. Perhaps that is for the best. #3 will have peers in her new home to show her around and help her make friends. And when they come to Utah, they will already have a stronger connection to our family.

These Five + Dad = Awkward Photos
(I'm not sure who is grabbing what in this goodbye to #3)

It's good that Tania has homeschool experience, because she can help #3 stay on track with online learning. The administration and our school counselor at Provo High are supportive of #3's adventure, and have found a creative way to keep her enrolled as a student with online classes so she can stay on track for graduation. To pull this off, she'll need to buckle down and commit about four hours each day to Utah schooling. In Colombia, she will also study pretty much any performing arts that she wants to learn: a myriad of drawing, singing, dancing, instrumental, acting and other art classes are offered to community members free of charge. The only part that isn't heaven on earth for #3 is the likelihood that her LDS seminary class will only be offered in the early morning. As in 5:00 a.m. #3 is a night owl and routinely sleeps until 10:00 a.m. during the summer. There is a possibility that with enough interest, there will be a second class offered later. We're hoping #3 tips the teen population numbers in that direction, otherwise, 5:00 a.m. might spell her untimely end.

Getting an afternoon seminary class is not out of the realm of possibility for #3. The last two weeks of preparing her for this undertaking have reminded me again that she leads a charmed life. No matter how much she procrastinates, when she really wants something, it happens for her, against the odds. Finding our Colombian doppleganger family in a world of billions of people is the first piece of evidence. Getting a flight to Bogota that was completely covered by Kent's credit card rewards that are about to expire helped. Then came airline requirements. We had some tension as she packed yesterday and I made her count the articles of clothing she was taking. I recommended four Sunday outfits, 12 T-shirts, ten long-sleeved shirts/sweaters, and one thick jacket. The amounts she packed were 12, 30, 35, and six respectively. (She and I clearly have different thoughts about how often clothes can be re-worn.) She whittled it down some, but when we weighed her suitcase on the bathroom scale, it was still 15 lbs. too heavy. Her friends helped me convince her that 54 different tops were too many, and she grudgingly dropped those numbers to six, 22, 29, and five. (Can we say "clothes horse"?) She ditched the peanut butter I was sending as a gift, moved jeans into carry-on, and crossed her fingers. Of course, it cracked us up when at the airport last night she weighed her giant suitcase and hit the 50.0-lb. limit exactly to the tenth of a pound.

Then there was driver's ed. She got her learner's permit eleven months after she was eligible for it. She then discovered she loves driving, but she put off registering for the required driver's ed class. Her plan was to go with a private course this summer. But you know how summers go: quickly. Suddenly, she was 18 days away from her flight. She finally registered and put up the $350 tuition, only to discover their drive times were completely booked and there was no way she would get the requisite 12 hours of driving and observing before leaving the country. She talked them into giving her a refund, and found AAA Driving School with eleven days to go. They were happy to accommodate her, even opening an extra drive time. In last week's five business days, #3 got her 12 hours in, completed the bookwork and packet in ten hours (they told her it would take 30 hours), passed two written tests, and even passed her road test before the last two days of instructional driving. With one business day to spare, she got her license. And now, the six-month wait period before she can drive with friends in the car will pass while she is out of town.

I'm telling you, charmed life.

I often wonder what impact we have in our home communities. With #3's late-night internal clock, she's never had friends in our home to the degree that her older sisters did. More often, she would come home from school and fall asleep until dinnertime. It's been sweet to see, though, how many dear friends she has. Over the past week, they've been dropping by, and we've heard many hours of happy teenage chatter in the last three days especially. Friday, #3 spent the night at my sister's home to get some quality time with her same-age cousin. It makes me happy that she will be so missed. Missed enough, hopefully, that she'll follow through on her promise to keep a blog during her travels.

I've been so happy for her, in fact, that I didn't shed a tear at the airport. Truth be told, this last week has been a little rough for me, the preventionist, working with her, the charmed procrastinator. She has pushed our parental limits, expecting exceptions because she is leaving. It's been irritating. I've felt like I did at the end of pregnancy. The delivery time I looked at with some apprehension became a promise of relief as it drew nearer. And so, yesterday as she tried to drive away with my van without permission, I looked forward to having her hands away from my car keys for ten months. Still, as we slapped the tags on her luggage and posed for final photos, I did feel a little emotional. I held her to me to tell her how excited I am for her, and it was gratifying to see her red-rimmed eyes as we broke our departing hug. Gratifying too, after #4's expressionless hug with her sister, to see the two of them imitating each other's spontaneous, goofy dance across the TSA's empty stanchions and belts. (I was too late to capture it on video.)

I probably won't sleep soundly until I see a photo of her safely with her Colombian family. I am comforted, though, by the texts she's been sending through the night complaining about the $5 charge for headphones on the plane (which I won't pay for), and asking me to cover her airport meal, (which I will). She and Madelyn are rapidly learning the financial lessons and otherwise of being independent. I am proud of them, and I am looking forward to the changed dynamics of our smaller household. Offspring #s 4 and 5 are still carefree and I'm grateful for our chance to give them way more parental attention than they've probably ever had. The near future is full of new experiences for us all!

And then there were two