Now you see her, now you don’t

Learning to live with the reality of having adult kids coming and going

Our daughter moved back home this summer. I know she’s home because I can tell by the trail of debris that she leaves in her wake starting at the front door.

First, there’s her leather knapsack dropped in a spot designed to trip me as I walk in. Then, a few feet from there is her purse, a pair of shoes and rolled-up socks. The trail usually ends in the living room with her open laptop and a few books strewn across the carpet.

If she ever embarked on a criminal career, you would not need a trained tracking dog to find her; the police could just follow a trail of clothes and debris from the bank vault to her apartment.

She finished school in the spring and decided to pursue more debt, oh, sorry, more education, this fall in Toronto.

“I think I might live at home and commute in for classes,” she said.

We both thought that was great. She would save money and we would have our daughter — our youngest — back home. At least that was the plan. The reality is another matter.

School started in September and since then we’ve seen Ella for about seven minutes. Most of the time, I don’t actually see her in person, but I know she’s here because there is a pile of cosmetics, hairbrushes, curling irons and a stack of empty latte takeout cups in the bathroom. It’s like a messy barista is living with us. Part time.

In reality, Ella treats the house like something between her high school locker and an open suitcase — only messier. And without posters of Arcade Fire.

Her program is busy and she has a part-time job, and she found that staying over in Toronto — with her aunt and uncle, with our good friends or at her boyfriend’s — easier and less time-wasting than commuting. And a helluva lot more fun.

We see her near the end of the week when she breezes in to do laundry and regroup a bit. She’s home and she’s not home, if you know what I mean.

And you figure out that though it’s the same house, and we’re pretty much the same people, it is Ella who is different. Living away for four years has changed her, made her more confident, more self-sufficient and independent.

We also saw this a few years ago when our middle son, Matthew, packed up at 18 and went off to the U.K. He said he’d be gone for two years and I chuckled and said to my wife, “I give him two months. Tops.” I was wrong.

He worked and played over there for two years and when he returned to Canada, he didn’t come home. He went out to Saskatchewan for the majestic grandeur of the Prairies — and a girl. And when he finally came back to Hamilton, he was a different person. He had left a boy, just out of high school, and came back a man. I thought he should stay with us while he did his college program to save money and because I liked his company, but the years abroad had changed him and he was ready for a new life, his own life.

“Roots and wings,” said my wife. “Roots and wings.” She often says mysterious things like this. Sometimes I think she’s ordering takeout food, other times I think she’s just hallucinating.

But, of course, she’s right. You give them roots so they know where they came from and so they won’t get lost in the world; and you give them wings so they get out into that world and go wherever their talents take them. And if that journey brings them back home, that is fine and the door is always open. But even if their bedroom is the same, they are different — and there’s no going back. And that’s good.

So Ella will look for an apartment in Toronto or find some other solution. And that means for a while, she will be here and not here and I will enjoy it while it lasts.

I just wish she would pick up her socks.

Paul Benedetti is the author of “You Can Have A Dog When I’m Dead.”