Leaving home is often a complicated and highly emotional transition in the lives of parents and their offspring. Some young men and women can't wait to get out the front door; others are apprehensive. Some parents look forward to an empty nest and the freedom and time to savor each other once again; others fear that once their children leave home, they will never come back. Parents want their children to grow up, but not everyone can handle the drastic changes that often come with independence. Heading off to college, joining the military, or finding an apartment of one's own mark transitional times that need to be honored and blessed with rituals.
In the film 51 Birch Street, documentary filmmaker Doug Block presented a glimpse into the lives of his parents and unraveled a secret that had been hidden for years. In The Kids Grow Up, an ambitious work, he turns his camera on his 17-year-old daughter Lucy, who will be leaving home for college in one year. Doug has already compiled a lot of film footage on Lucy at different stages of her life. Now that she is more private and independent than ever, some of the intimate connection he once felt with her has vanished. We can feel the tension in their home when Doug tries to squeeze an important answer out of Lucy, even after she has indicated no interest in sharing her opinion or ideas with him, let alone the rest of us in the theatre audience. Despite this uneasiness between father and daughter, we are convinced that although Doug knows that Lucy will leave home, he does not know this in his heart.
Three other changes overwhelm this family as they move toward Lucy's departure. She invites her French-speaking boyfriend to stay and Doug is quite upset when they sleep in the same room. Next, his wife, Marjorie, a teacher at a law school, plunges into a clinical depression. In addition, Doug's step-son has just had a child and expects Doug and Marjorie to adapt easily to the new role of grandparents. Doug talks with his own aloof father, who laments that he spent all his time and energy on work instead of being there for his kids.
With so many ports of entry, The Kids Grow Up will connect with many people. Doug releases Lucy to her new life at college and overcomes his clinging attachment. There is no ritual, but the film itself serves that purpose when it revisits the high points in Lucy's life and celebrates her mixture of fear and hope about the future. In her book Meditations for the Passages and Celebrations of Life: A Book of Vigils, Noela Evans writes of a parent's response to a child leaving home:
"Your years in my care have blessed me as I have watched the unfolding of your life. It is with pride and tenderness that I now release that life to follow its own promise. I love you. I believe in you. I wish only the best for you."
