Talia passed her driving test last month, but still hadn’t driven anywhere alone. She called me while I was at a noisy restaurant and told me that she wanted to meet her friend at the movie theater.  Could she drive there alone?

I told her that that was fine with me and she said that she was a little nervous about finding her way to the theater.  Could she keep her phone on speakerphone and talk to me while she was driving?

Throughout the process of learning to drive, Talia has had an amusing habit of providing “play by play” commentary as she nervously encounters challenges: “Oh no, there’s a car coming, what do I do now?”  She spits out the words rapid-fire, talking to herself as much as she’s asking me a question.

I agreed to be her co-pilot from a distance and quickly paid my bill and left the noisy restaurant.  I started walking home, talking with her as I walked, and even saw her from a distance, taking her first wrong turn.

“Dad, what do I do now?  I’m at that busy intersection and I think I just went the wrong way!”

One thing I’ve noticed as my children have grown up – for some reason kids don’t seem to be paying attention to where they’re going nowadays as their parents ferry them from place to place.  Maybe it’s because they’re paying attention to their Gameboys and i-pods, maybe it’s because they rarely walk or ride their bikes anywhere.  My son recently asked me for driving directions to another theater in our hometown.  When I told him that it was on the corner of 4th and A Streets, he asked me where that was.  When I responded that 4th St. is the main street of the town where he has lived his entire life, he said, “I didn’t know that was the name of that street!”

Talia wasn’t really that far off course – she was just taking an alternate route.  She kept me informed of the landmarks that she was passing – “Redhill Shopping Center is on my right.  Now I’m passing Drake High School.”

We lost our connection when she unsuccessfully attempted to merge and headed down a different road, out of cell phone range. She went around in a circle until she was back on course and then called me back.

“I’m passing the theater now.  Where do I park?”

I guided her from one parking lot to a second one, but they were both full.  The DMV no longer requires that you learn to parallel park in order to pass your driving test.  I think she and I practiced parallel parking once – on a space that was long enough for three cars.

She drove around the streets near the theater – “There’s a space!  No, it’s a loading zone.  There’s another one!  No, I would have to parallel park.”

She became exasperated when pedestrians had the audacity to cross the street in front of her – “Someone’s walking right in front of the car!  I think he’s trying to get run over!”

Meanwhile I was nearing my house – we had traveled almost the same distance. It must have been a strange sight to see me laughing and shouting instructions into my phone as I walked down the sidewalk in the dark.

Finally she found a space large enough to park, but in front of a “dark and creepy park” far from the theater.  She was already late for the movie, so this one would have to do.  She parked the car and I heard the beeping sounds as she locked the door.

Safely on the tarmac, she said goodbye.  I told her to call me if she needed help for the drive home.

She arrived home safely a couple of hours later.  “Why didn’t you call? I asked.

“I know my way home, Dad,” she said.

I guess she was paying attention after all.

She’s our youngest child and since she attends a Catholic school with grades kindergarten to eight, this is, at last, the end of our days of having children in elementary school. The school community is a close-knit one with great respect for tradition and ritual, so during the last few weeks it has felt as if our family has been presented with a gold watch over and over again. There was the dinner dance for eighth graders and their parents complete with a farewell speech from the principal, and a “first dance” with fathers dancing with daughters and mothers with sons. There was the eighth grade play, with each student acting a part on the same stage where they had performed as wild animals in the first grade circus seven years ago. This was followed by the class trip, the award ceremony, the last day of wearing uniforms, finals week, and the graduation itself.

It seems like the school principal had figured out how to wring every last drop of nostalgia out the waning days of our sons’ and daughters’ childhoods.

To make it even harder to bear, my daughter is ecstatic about leaving grammar school with nary a backwards glance as she skips off towards her high school future.

But where does that leave me? As a father of the twenty-first century, I’ve been on the cutting edge of father involvement with my children. My wife and I have chosen to take a non-traditional approach to our roles as parents. When my son was born, I stayed home and served the “Mr. Mom” role while my wife worked and when my daughter arrived I worked part-time so that I could be available to help my children. My duties have included everything from diaper changer to PTA president, soccer coach to library assistant. I became used to being the only dad in a group of moms: When my son was an infant, they changed the name of our parenting group from “Mommy and Me” to “Mommy, Daddy, and Me” and years later I didn’t even bat an eye when one of my female friends said, “We moms will be attending the meeting” when she was referring to a group which included me. I even become indignant when someone condescendingly refers to “soccer moms”.

So, I guess it’s only natural that I’m going through the kind of identity crisis which in the past was something usually experienced by mothers. When you come to define yourself largely through your role as a parent, it follows that you’re going to be jolted a bit when your child doesn’t seem to be a child anymore. Sure, you know that you will still be needed, maybe more so than before – just last month I helped my daughter purchase a pair of spiky high heel shoes for her school dance – but somehow that only reminded me that she is no longer a little girl. In fact, for years I have been making a conscious effort to slowly wean myself from being involved in activities at the elementary school, knowing that this day would come.

I spoke with a father of a high school senior a few days ago who has been raising his daughter by himself for the past ten years. After graduation, she plans to attend college a hundred miles from home. He told me, with a touch of sadness in his voice, “I guess I’ll just have to figure out a way to reinvent myself.”

That’s the key, I guess. We dads have been reinventing the institution of fatherhood for the past generation or two. Those of us who have chosen to be more involved in raising our children have had a front row seat at the milestones of their lives. We’ve been able to develop an easy communication honed during years of chatting with the person in the passenger seat and have been rewarded with the kind of close relationship that fathers of the past couldn’t imagine.

Still, it doesn’t make it any easier when a phase of this relationship seems to be ending. Admitting how we feel and talking about it with others is new ground for most of us as well.

Traveling into new territory is always a little uncomfortable, but I’m not the only one making the trip. I think I’ll call my friend and ask him about how he’s doing with this re-invention thing.

My friend Anthony explains it like this: “It’s like seaweed growing on the ocean floor right before the place where the waves break. The waves come in and the seaweed bends and sways toward the shore. The water recedes and the seaweed bends back the other way.” He goes on to explain, “My boys have all kinds of unusual interests and hobbies – horror movies, comic books, you name it. I try to get them interested in the things I like and sometimes they won’t go for it. I decided to act like the seaweed – the waves come in and I bend a bit, I agree to go to a comic book convention or read my son’s script for the next great Frankenstein movie. Before I know it, I’m actually enjoying their activities and they’re much more willing to come along with me when I suggest a ‘boring’ camping trip.”

At first I chuckled a bit about this theory, but when I shared it with my son Joe, he understood the metaphor right away. He’s passionate about playing his favorite computer game and my wife and I have struggled for years to break him of what seemed like an addiction and were constantly trying to get him to venture outside of his comfort zone – travel to Mexico, take a backpacking trip, get more involved in sports. What would happen, I asked him, if we applied the seaweed theory to this situation?

He liked the idea! He didn’t like the notion of any kind of quantifiable one-to-one tradeoff -two hours of computer playing by Dad equals a two-night backpacking trip. He was also suspicious of lip service – Dad trying the game a couple of times but not really buying into the experience.

Surprisingly, he rejected my offer that he could fill his end of the bargain by doing some adventures with friends, rather than me. He felt that this would be contrary to the true spirit of the Seaweed Theory!

More surprising still, my wife agreed that the theory was worth trying.

So, we have struck a deal. I am now playing his game and have given my character the name Piso Mojado (Spanish for wet floor) which I, and probably no teenager on the planet, think is exceedingly clever. Joe is amused by my clumsy efforts to play – my typing skills are great for typing words, but terrible for manipulating virtual characters and I keep getting eaten by some fiendish looking wild dogs. He is also very puzzled when I suggest that my character might just do a little hiking and exploring rather than bringing the head of the enemy chief back to our leader!

I guess you could call this the “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” theory of childrearing as well. My son only has two more years left in high school, so if this is a way to spend more time together, it’s worth a try.

Piso Mojado is now on level 3 (Joe’s character is on level 70), but I’m ready to face those pesky dogs again. No plans for a backpacking trip yet, but I’ll keep you informed.

Who will join me in trying out the Seaweed Theory of Parenting with their chlidren this summer? It may not be Dr. Spock approved, but I think it’s worth a try.