They Tell Me My Baby Is An Adult Now

“One day.”

That was the buzzword when my daughter was little. I knew, deep down, that there would be major moments. All of them would occur one day.

One day, she’ll be driving.

One day, she’ll be graduating.

One day, she’ll be an adult.

Well, it’s 2026 and all three of those days have happened. “One day” is no longer a hazy, futuristic idea. It’s real. It has a real date on the calendar, a real memory, and genuine pictures saved on my phone.

Those future moments not only came, but they went. Today, they’re in the rear-view mirror. There’s one scary aspect to all of that.

There are still more days to come.

Milestones that lay ahead weren’t even on my radar. Mentally, I always stopped the day she turned her tassel. This former kid has so much left to do.

I didn’t cry at her graduation. I’m not a huge crier, but I think it was my inability to truly see the scene before me as real that kept me grounded. When I looked down at my little girl sitting there, I didn’t see an 18-year-old woman. I saw my baby.

No, no, no. Don’t read it wrong. I’m not talking mentally. I mean actually. I still see a baby when I look at her.

Just like her brother, Olivia has grown incrementally over time. In my head, this is what she looked like at 10. It’s not until I see a picture of her at that age that I’m reminded of her evolution.

Or when I see her friends, like I did at prom this past week. These kids who told me all about slime recipes and Harry Potter were now ladies in dresses, standing next to boys in suits. I didn’t know what the hell was happening.

I didn’t cry at prom either. That also wasn’t real in my eyes. This was the Little Ladies dance that I went to with the other elementary school dads all those years ago. I remembered the dress. It feels like yesterday.

This is all happening in rapid succession and life hasn’t slowed down for me to catch my breath yet. Right as we started revving up the final train to graduation, she turned 18. That was probably the craziest part.

There were so many birthdays that we bit our lip and exclaimed things like, “Wow! Nine! You’re not a little kid anymore!”

Yet none of that was real. This was the first one that was. She honestly wasn’t a kid anymore. There was an adult at the dinner table.

I didn’t cry when she turned 18. Once again, I thought I would. Didn’t. Maybe it was because my feelings were too complicated at the moment.

Olivia is not only an adult. She’s a wonderful adult. She took all the things I said to her, even when I didn’t think she was listening, and grew into the person I hoped she would become. We didn’t stagger toward 18 candles. She owned that race to adulthood and crossed the line like a champion.

My daughter is an unwavering, fiercely loyal, dynamic force of nature. I know this in my bones. Whatever she decides to do, she’s going to do it to the best of her ability. And if you know Olivia, you know that there’s no ceiling to the heights of her abilities.

Her grades were unbelievable and her extracurriculars were exemplary. As a student and scholar, no one can touch her.

However, I explained to her once that I didn’t care about any of that. In one of the most important things I ever told her:

“Listen. I am so proud of how well you do in school, but know something. I don’t care how many awards you get or how many diplomas. If you’re not a good person, I won’t be proud. You have to be good to others and a positive force for the world. That’s more important than any degree.”

Today, she is all those things I hoped for. I see it in the things she does, the ambitions she has, and the love she shows to her brother Lucas. I’ve written four books, hundreds of thousands of blog posts, even more print and digital content than I could ever begin to tabulate, and the greatest thing I ever created was Olivia Guttman. It’s not even close.

Now I have to share her with the world. I have to let her go out and do all those things that I knew she would.

And selfishly, I don’t want to let her go. I want to go back in time, bring those moments back, and do them all over again. The afterschool drawing sessions that went on forever. The Disney Junior TV shows we rewatched way too much. The days when so much future still lay ahead.

And that right there is perhaps the “one day” that hit the hardest for me to see come to pass…

One day, you’re going to miss all this.

I do. So much. But I know that the unknown doesn’t have to be scary. Our relationship has only grown and, as she’s become an adult, I consider Olivia my daughter, my confidant, and my closest ally in the world. I will gladly give up any chance to go back in exchange for the life ahead with this amazing woman I raised.

Yeah, so maybe I cried writing this. I don’t know. Use your imagination. I’m going to say no, for poetic purposes.

To everyone reading this, thank you for letting me share those years with you in the pages of this blog. It means a lot. You’ve taken this journey with me. I can’t wait to share all the things that come next.

And to Olivia, I love you more than you’ll ever know. I’m so proud of you every single day, and I want the world to know it.

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