Choose your favorite NASA blastoff metaphor and there you have it: our daughter is off to college!
It’s been a week, and so far things sound like they’re going great. Settled early into her dorm and then a first-year small group camping trip that sounded cold and rainy but also fun and bonding. The rest of the first years moved in Friday, with four days of orientation before class starts Tuesday.
I’ve been waiting to figure out how I’m feeling about this, but it’s all over the place. I was expecting a boo-hoo crash of major proportions, and instead I’m feeling quite happy and hopeful overall. Probably a little bit of shock, a little bit of denial, and genuine joy are all mixing it up in there.
I’ve got a nagging feeling something’s amiss (is everyone here?), though I’ve also enjoyed cleaning things up. The last few years I’ve loved watching videos of parents gleefully planning revenge visits to their grown kids where they’ll drop their jacket on the floor inside the front door, open snacks and leave the wrappers on the counter, kick off their shoes, and stack up dirty dishes in the guest room. So why is a tidy bedroom and bathroom a bit or a forlorn sight?
I’m also quite worn out from all the planning, or more likely the worrying about the planning. So much about the preparations for college dropoff reminded me of our pre-adoption planning: many unknowns, such a jump into the abyss. How do you prepare for a seismic change? This time, strangely, I’m supposed to be letting things go. My daughter, literally, but also some of my basic responsibilities. Where is she? When is she coming home? What’s for dinner that everyone will eat?
I’m having vivid flashbacks. The night our daughter, newly arrived and not quite 5, pushed the cat off the balcony. How she insisted on riding in her little brother’s tiny stroller. The many projects with construction paper, glue, glitter, and string. The goth phase. The eyelashes and makeup phase.
I’ve also been thinking about the day in 2012 my folks flew in to meet the kids, but hid out at the hotel for a few hours, too early to check in, but too shy and nervous to come meet their new grandkids. Of course the kids took over and won the day. But sadly, there are no grandparents left to see this big transition. They would have been so proud! They would have worried. They would have sent a check. Or meant to anyway. At least the earlier versions, before they became more like little kids than our actual kids. My head spins trying to keep the timeline straight.
I guess transition is the natural state of things. My dad retreating into shyness, then into a passive, forgetful silence. My little kids going from following me everywhere, begging for my attention at all times, to bigger kids fighting to prove their independence, before they could actually handle it. To young adults who could generally handle things, though not always. To a woman ready for college! Our daughter has given us plenty of reasons to worry over the years, has in her headstrong way quit, skipped, and vetoed plenty of things, but she also stayed in high school, graduated, got into a university, GONE to college! Brain-explode-emoji please. A kid who has spent any time in foster care going to college is really beating the odds.
I try to remember my own off-to-college, though much of it is a blur. I remember the moment I realized my parents were about to say goodbye and leave, and how much I’d been hoping they would, and how panicked I was when I realized the time was here. But the rest of it? The first week? The first month? Not much.
I still vividly remember being a 5th or 6th grader, realizing that the goal of all this education was to shoot me off into the world at the end of it, and being certain I could not manage being an adult. I made my mom promise I wouldn’t have to move out if I didn’t want to, and kindly she agreed I could live with them as long as I wanted to. Somewhere in middle and high school I must have perfected the art of pushing my way through things. Inwardly I was still certain it would be a disaster, but somehow by pretending I could do it, I managed. I’m not sure I’ve ever completely lost the feeling that I’m just faking it, that “the other shoe will drop,” that disaster is just around the corner and we just need to power through.
Maybe that should be my half-empty-nest goal, to work on really, truly taking in that I’ve managed just about all of the adulting I’ve tried. Instead of fretting about the kids (when they’re doing well), maybe I can focus on myself and trust that I can manage, and see if freeing up some of that fretting and fear opens new doors for this grandpa-aged dad.
