In J's senior year at high school we watched Le Grand Voyage together. This was one of the rare occasions where she recommended something to me - it used to be disproportionately the other way around. It was an amazing movie and the experience remains of the brightest moments of J's pre-college life with me. I remembered this event recently on a day that was not nearly as bright.
There is no way for J and I to meet in the foreseeable future. I am grateful she is well where she is and her mental state is as good as can be expected under the circumstances. So much has changed so rapidly. On most days I believe it is for the best. J will have learned to be independent a lot faster than she would have otherwise, she would have learned to draw on her on inner resources to make it through difficult times when being physically around friends and family is impossible. I hope these hard lessons serve her well for the rest of her life, that they bring clarity about what is worth pursuing despite the odds.
Her view of this time and it's value to her growing up to be her own person in the world may be very different from mine. I would not even begin to guess how and why. That movie is one of our favorites and the I think it speaks to the universal generational and cultural divide between parent and child beyond the chasm of religious versus secular.
Le Grand Voyage is not, however, an examination of the dichotomies of the spoken word; indeed, very little is actually said between the men as they forge their way through passport controls, bustling city streets and empty autoroutes that stretch for mile upon mile upon mile into the never-ending distance. Rather, it is the somatic exploration of all that is unsaid, expressed so compellingly through the nuanced facial gestures and subtle physical postures of the two principal protagonists.
What is left unsaid between an adult child and their parent is a big and complex universe. I am only beginning to learn how to navigate that with J. Specially that our communication only happens from a distance now, I have to trust my instincts about how she receives what I say, when I may have crossed the line or fallen back into the pattern of treating her like a child instead of an adult.
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