For a year now, my friends and I have been talking about this day. The day we pack the car to take our oldest off to college. (When I say "we," I mean "our son") Many of my friends have already taken that drive, and are now looking at us knowingly; some offering words of wisdom, some telling us what to expect, some gracefully showing their own range of emotions without expecting ours to be the same. It reminds me of another, somehow similar, time in our lives with Jonathan.
As our firstborn, everything about him was so much more unknown. Each stage of pregnancy, every piece of furniture bought, even the types of diapers we looked at all came with so much well-intentioned advice. Some we listened to, and some we later laughed about, and in the end, when it was someone else's first time, we couldn't help sharing our own thoughts. It's part of life, of being the social animals we are, to share what we experience, and sometimes to feel a bit like an expert when we've been through some right of passage.
It's events like this that make me think most of Dad. It used to hurt some (some?? Did I just say, "some?" Because it used to hurt like hell to have Dad come to mind when an Event came up!) when these kinds of milestones occurred. In all honesty, yesterday I just happened to think that Dad was pretty excited about me going off to college all those years ago, and maybe that's why I can be more excited than worried, nervous or upset. Probably it's just because I'm me, and it hasn't hit me yet. My style of anticipation is a little more dramatic--I tend to foresee the stuff that couldn't possibly happen, and put off the more "real" stuff until I actually go through it. At any rate, last night on my way home, when I hit a red light, it suddenly hit me that within a few days, we'd be driving away from him at college.
We laugh at the thought of parents who don't know how to leave their kids rooms after unpacking, and I have to admit, I was a little saddened that there were no activities or festivities planned for the parents on move-in day. But today, while listening to a good friend talk about dropping his son off, and how it affected him, I realized a common theme that Guy and I share: we've never experienced this before--from either direction. Guy was a commuter student, and lived at home. My parents did not drop me off at school: I insisted that my boyfriend take me, and no one argued the point. I, we, don't know what it's like to say good-bye to a parent in a dorm room, so how could we possibly know what we are doing? Frankly, I'm now a little freaked.
I still firmly believe this is the next chapter; simply a page turning on the beginning of a fantastic adventure. But what if I do turn out to be "The Most Attached Parent" and his roommate and his parents think I'm nuts?? (Well, more nuts than I really am; which is actually quite endearing, I'm told.) What if I don't have enough emotion, and Jonathan thinks we're glad to be rid of him? Where is my example?? Years ago, Dad and I had a talk about this very same subject. He had reached an age older than any of his male relatives, and he didn't know how to "be." I remember telling him that he'd been doing a mighty fine job thus far, and I knew he could just keep being himself. He promised to give that a go.
There are times now when I wonder if he prayed for the strength to be himself, as I do now. The following years, he considered to be life's gravy. This weekend, I will be myself; I will give it a go and hope for the best.
Good luck, Jonathan. Fly high, with the wings we've given you.
No comments:
Post a Comment