Parents Draw Maps, But Children Must Find Their Own Way

The night she turned 14, my daughter went to the top of the Empire State Building. At 14, a young woman imagines the big, bright world out there.

A dad’s job must be to help a teenager begin to see it.

Seeing the world requires more than an elevator ride up 86 floors on a summer vacation.

The disciplines needed to truly picture the world, grasp it, occasionally understand it, take a lifetime to master.

Fourteen-year-olds curse the cataracts of childhood. My daughter demands that she be allowed to look at a world larger than her bedroom and her bunny.

Assisting her in this task might be compared to performing laser eye surgery on a self-conscious kitten who is watching everything in a mirror. Go too fast and you get scratched. Too slow, and the kitten yowls in impatient agony.

My daughter, along with most of her 14-year-old girlfriends, spends a considerable part of each evening trying to see the world by looking in the mirror.

Her smiles, hairstyles and each tiny blemish are examined, questioned and discussed. Who am I? Where am I headed? How will I get there?

Some answers can be found staring, self-absorbed in that mirror, mirror on the wall.

Picaso painted his first masterpiece at 14. Bill Gates was messing with electronics at that age.

As my daughter searches the mirror for her inner soul and talents, I hope she sees a mouth that is filled with the voice of a rich mezzo soprano. I hope she sees ears that capture the nuance of foreign language. I hope she knows that she combs her hair over a brain that can keenly solve algebra problems the way her father never could.

These are the gifts I see in her.

My role most assuredly is not to see for her.

This distinction between being the eye surgeon, not the Seeing Eye Dog, is difficult for a father.

My 14-year-old often asserts she has 20/20 vision - particularly on such teenage matters as sex, drugs and music.

To assume she is right would be as foolish as sending the visuallyimpaired into a crosswalk with no understanding of traffic sounds.

Still, she must see the colors of life with her own eyes, even as she bumps into familiar objects like dad, mom and family.

Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote a book in which she spoke of the African idea that it takes a village to accomplish the task. In his acceptance speech as the Republican presidential candidate, Bob Dole disagreed. It takes a family to raise a child, he proclaimed.

I think they are both right.

A family can give a girl a safe place to dream. A village can give her a safe place to venture out and make her dreams come true.

Atop the Empire State Building a few nights ago my daughter asked me, “Dad, do you think I will ever sing on Broadway?”

Some girl just like her will.

At 14, you begin to think rollicking, audacious thoughts. That is if you manage to see beyond a pair of fashion jeans and getting kissed.

This is a dad talking, remember?

Very soon now, my daughter’s eyes will turn away from mine. She will seek out others in the village.

Because she isn’t a fly, or fish, or crocodile, her eyes can look in only one direction at a time.

She is turning now. She is teaching me how to watch her go. High school is but 15 days away.

For her I pray one day she will look back and say, “I’ve found a path for me, the one you helped me see.”

, DataTimes MEMO: Chris Peck is the Editor of The Spokesman-Review. His column appears each Sunday on Perspective.