* * Listening to Whitney

And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man on the moon
When you comin' home dad?
I don't know when, but we'll get together then
You know we'll have a good time then

        Harry Chapin

Our only daughter, Whitney, is 19.  She has just completed her freshman year at Virginia Tech.  Although she lives across town from us, I see her way too infrequently.  Yesterday morning, we had a date. 

Whitney and I have always gotten along great.  She’s delightful, polite, well-mannered, and respectful.  When I tell people her mom and I have never disciplined her, they think I’m kidding, but it’s the truth.  She’s never misbehaved.  On those rare occurrences when we’ve been snippy towards one another, we’ve always made it a point to smooth things over before bedtime.  “I hate going to bed being mad at you.”  We have never had an issue too difficult to talk through.  Just having her around and hearing her voice calms and centers me.

But she has a busy life, these days busier than mine.  There’s schoolwork, the sorority, boyfriends, horseback riding and work.  Over the past several weeks, she’s not had time for me and I’d been on her case about it.  Even yesterday, after arriving at 9am she said, “I can only be together until around noon.”

I put her on the back of our Honda Pacific Coast motorcycle and we headed northbound towards Mountain Lake.  I had recently purchased a pair of electronic wireless communicators that allow my passenger and me to talk to each other.  She had never used these before.  We were able to converse all the way up the mountain.  It was a beautiful, hot day with puffy clouds hanging around the mountains rimming the lake.  We parked near the grand sandstone hotel, the scene of the cult movie from 20 years ago, Dirty Dancing, and proceeded uphill.  We carried only a pair of binoculars and a bottle of water.

The trail emerges near the summit of Salt Pond Mountain where a huge power line rips across the landscape.  The downside of this is the huge superimposition of the industrial world upon an otherwise unspoiled natural setting.  The upside is that the clear-cut provides wonderful views, particularly to the west.  There was a steady westerly wind and we basked in the breeze as we sat on a rock outcropping, watching hawks and conversing. I did a little lecture I've done before about determining compass directions from the angle of the sun.  The view was grand and inspiring, what makes our area of SW VA so special.

She told me about her school work, boyfriends, and roommate situations.  It was wonderful to be in her company again.  She is a beautiful girl with long blonde hair, bright blue eyes, and teeth as straight and white as a string of pearls.

I told her how unhappy I had been at how infrequently we had been together in recent weeks.  I told her about the Harry Chapin song, Cat in the Cradle.  “It’s about a man who raises a boy and when the boy was young the man had too little time for him but as the boy grew older the boy had increasingly less time for the father.”  We laughed about how this was happening to us.

She mentioned that she intended to spend much of that afternoon at the graduation for the senior class at Blacksburg high school.  Her own graduation had been one year earlier.  She explained that she had many friends who were a year behind her and she wanted to share in their happy day.  She expressed some concerns about how some former friends and their families would react to her.  I said, “Here is some fatherly advice.  Put all that out of your mind and treat everyone you see as a long-lost friend and be as cordial and cheerful to everyone as you can possibly be.”

She asked me about my books and I mentioned that I had a novel in mind that involved a character traveling to Ireland.  Jane, Whitney and I have been to Ireland before but I was surprised when Whitney told me how much she loved Ireland and Irish culture.  I told her that if our financial situation allowed it, perhaps next summer we could go back to Ireland again for a longer trip so I could research the book.

We walked back to the motorcycle and dressed for the descent of the mountain.  With each passing mile, the air temperature grew increasingly warmer.  Whitney chattered in my earphones almost continually all the way home.  As I write this, I cannot remember what it was she had to say, but it was it was wonderful to have her voice again in my ear.