You must’ve just dropped off a kid at college.
Sept. 2011 offspring drop-off at Tufts
Oldest; youngest; even a stray middle one–doesn’t matter whether you’ve been through this before. Drop-off complete; you step in the front door of your house…you feel the void. You make up the vacated bed and it stays made. The sports season has started and you don’t have any games to go to or snacks to pack for practice. You don’t need to buy those fall play tickets anymore (but you still want to go—is that weird?) Your kid’s friends—the ones you swore you’d kill if you saw them spilling chips on your couch one more time–they’re not hanging around anymore. And you can’t wait for Thanksgiving to come to see every last one of them.
Most of all, the morning ritual is gone.
The morning ritual started in kindergarten. Through all the breakfasts, shoelaces, backpacks, projects stuffed into the car, last-minute bagels to buy for 25, getting up too early, sleeping too late, dealing with drop-off, then pick-up, cringing as the newly licensed 16-year-old peeled out of the driveway—gone.
You want to call, text, and generally have a live webcam focused on the offspring’s whereabouts at college—are they okay? Is the roommate weird? Did they find their classes? Get books? Are they getting enough to eat?
Parents’ weekend finally comes. God this is exciting. On campus, you quickly realize that you are there for two purposes only: to take the beloved to dinner and a brunch, and to buy groceries and other necessities (errands for which they probably will not accompany you). Brief introductions to new friends, then they’re off. And they will have plans each night that involve sleeping until noon the next day. But those dinner and that trip to Target, you treasure it as the most quality time you’ve ever spent together.
You get back home and you’re pretty happy that Thanksgiving isn’t really that far away. Then something starts to happen. Summer finally faded away. The kid seems pretty happy, you daresay, well-adjusted. He found class. She made friends, pledged, figured things out, landed on her own two feet. And then you did too. You reached out to friends more often. Took on a mentee at work. Signed up for that class you never had time to take. Volunteered. For godsakes, you started a scrapbook.
I know one 19-year-old young man who just transferred from a school far, far away to one 45 minutes from his home. His mom had a mistaken perception that this meant he’d be readily accessible to the family several times a week. After his fourth day at school, she couldn’t reach him. The phone went to voice mail. Texts went unanswered. A stranger called from his phone then hung up. By that night she was frantic, calling security at his dorm and demanding he be tracked down. He called—yes, he’d lost his phone. The next day, when the called again, he had replaced his phone and all was well.
“You have to understand I’m on my own now,” he said. “If you don’t hear from me for one day you don’t need to panic.” And yes, he understood the money for the new phone was coming from his bank account. “I’ve got it under control,” he assured me. Oops, yes, me. My son is fine. We won’t be meeting for coffee every week and we may not talk every day—in fact we won’t. “There’s just not that much to say,” he informed me. He is a 19-year-old male, after all.
The good news is, my daughter is now a senior in college and she does call almost every day—and there’s always enough to say. I’ve got my morning ritual honed. And yes, maybe it’s weird, but I’ve booked tickets to tickets to the high school’s fall theatre production.