Lu (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} tamborinegrl) wrote,@ 2007-09-17 20:42:00 |
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College Roommates Freshman Year. Fast Forward To...
Luann!!! I am sitting here at my computer, contemplating sending my oldest child to college (a creative writing major, mind you, thank you very much) and suddenly want very much to hear from you.
I must apologize for not sending Christmas cards - they fell by the wayside a few years back and we never picked them back up. Grace (age 18) is going to the University of Iowa in two weeks and I am flooded with memories of my first week at Macalester. (Black arm bands, walkie talkies, students taking over the administration building). You had a refrigerator, I had a guitar, and I don't remember being lonely.
You look exacly the same in your picture, which is sort of comforting. Tell me how your family is, how your job is, how your writing is going, what kind of vacations do you take. I am moving from Watertown WI to a (somewhat) larger town; Appleton, in a few weeks. Besides sending Grace off to college, we will be also be leaving all our church family, our theatre family, our high school soccer family, and a few other families we have attached to over the last 13 years here. So I guess my nostalgia is washing over the sides of my boat right now - and I was so glad to see your smiling face. Isn't the internet great? love Deedee
DeeDee!
Where did you see my smiling face? I think it's wonderful that you think I haven't changed. I must admit hitting fifty has been difficult, and I tell anyone who asks that I'm 19.
Before we took our oldest, Nate, to Boston for college, I joked that I worried about the basics, like could he cross the street alone, and would he remember to eat. So I made this joke to his tennis coach who knew how spacey Nate is, and he suddenly got a concerned look on his face and said, "He won't have to cross Boston streets often will he?"
Then I got even more worried.
So we took Nate to Berklee College of Music in the middle of the city, and we helped him settle into his dorm room in a dormitory crawling with long-haired guitar players. His father told him he shouldn't spend too much time in the dorm, and he should study in the library. Then we took him out for lunch, and then we said goodbye at the corner of Newbury and Mass Ave., and he walked one way, and we walked another, and I turned and watched his red t-shirt disappearing into the crowd on the city sidewalk, and I was sure he was going to be hit by the next a bus.
But it gets worse.
I cried, of course. And then on the drive home, my younger son played Jimi Hendrix's "Sweet Angel" ("Fly on, my sweet angel...forever I will be by your side...")and I cried harder.
I'm going to get to the part where I tell you it gets better, but first, this scene: Cut to three years later. Nate has finished his junior year (and has yet to be hit by a bus). Will has been away from home for a post-grad prep school year, a summer in a nearby apartment, and his first year in college. But now he is leaving for a summer job at a camp hundreds of miles away in the Berkshires. I keep my composure while he drives out of the driveway, and then go to our backyard, and the thought hits me that I want them to be 10 and 8 years old again, and I want to spend another summer playing with them in the pool. And, of course, I totally breakdown in tears. Just like I did when my oldest first went to college.
Moral of the story? I don't know, except that the empty nest thing sort of hits you in waves. And I must say, in between these times of loneliness and tears have been a lot of times when I've been glad to have the house to myself, to NOT hear them coming home at 2 a.m., to know the car will always be in the driveway where I left it...
Watching your kids leave home for college is emotional, no doubt about it. Just remember, the alternative is that they get a job at McDonalds and live with YOU.
(The above is a real exchange from last month. Imagine! You will be sending notes like this to each other some day...)
(The above is a real exchange from last month. Imagine! You will be sending notes like this to each other some day...)
