There’s an unsettled, anxious thrum in the air that I haven’t felt so strongly since we were approved for fostering but hadn’t yet gotten a placement. Hadn’t met the kids. Waiting. Wanting. Building energy for something that hasn’t yet happened.
Now big changes are coming again, almost a reverse of that earlier transition. A letting go. Not a complete ending of course: we’ll still be parenting a young adult in college. We’ll be paying the bills. We’ll get texts and phone calls. (We’d better get texts and calls!) I can’t exactly picture what it will be like, but starting in late August she’ll be living in a different city, at the other end of our state, an 8+ hour drive away.
As is my habit, I’m planning the s*** out of the transition. This is a crutch, of course, but at least it’s a coping mechanism that also produces some results. It seems superior in most ways to denial, drugs, or drinking.
Earlier in the summer I was forbidden from mentioning college (“live in the moment, dad!”) so I started my dorm room planning spree in secret. Luckily the off-to-college lists and blogs all feature plenty of practical stuff that didn’t really need any input. Laundry bags, storage and moving stuff, command strips to hold up posters, a mattress topper to ensure my princess sleeps. A couple boxes of college-ready items collected themselves.
I’m pleased to say that with not quite 5 weeks left until launch, our college freshman has kicked into mood board mode. My Wirecutter research on affordable quality sheets didn’t interest her so much (it’s not for me! I’m not going to college again!), but her vision of fluffy shabby chic covers and throws and bright pops of color from the pillows and sheets have resulted in some purchases. My worries have morphed from “we won’t have the stuff” to “how are we going to get all the stuff in the car?” That’s progress.
But I fear the planning and the shopping, while it tires me out a bit, is only tangentially helping me wrap my mind around this. My baby’s going off into the world!
My friend Stacey Zolt Hara, a fellow parent of a just-graduated senior, writes beautifully about “the feeling of living on the cliff of saying goodbye to a child, of loosening the vice grip of the first 18 years and slowly letting your arms out wide to release her into the universe.” It’s a beautiful piece full of fond remembrances of small moments in parenting, and I hope to steal a page from that book. It’s a good time to hold dear the sweet memories. But I’m having lots of other feelings too.
For instance worry. (Is worry a feeling?) I cannot picture what this new setup will feel like. All the “your kid’s packing list for college” articles are helping me focus on the fact that it’s happening, but once she’s flown, what in the world happens then? This feels just like 13 years ago, contemplating unknown kids moving into the house with us and having no idea what the next day would be like.
Also second guessing. I think back over the last 13 years and fear I didn’t do enough, or did too much, made choice B when A might have been better. Should we have treated some situations more lightly, figuring they were a phase, and others more seriously, so that they didn’t become ingrained patterns? I know litigating the past is a foolish hobby, but it’s part of the tape running through my head right now.
And grief. I can’t believe the childhood part went so fast! From the moment she and her brother arrived, she a parentified, fierce almost-5-year-old, it’s just been a blink. And she’s 18? This can’t be right. What will I do without my young-kids-in-school role as dad?
And exhaustion. This has been a lot of work! Every parent I know is tired out, and sometimes parenting kids with trauma has felt like a can’t-win, with so much sadness and floundering. I hope we did our best, I know there’s still more work to come.
I guess the win is that we did all survive. We made mistakes, but we also improved, all of us, by any metric you choose. We learned so much, faced our fears, had the hard conversations. We adapted. We cried. Sometimes I just went to bed early, but I always woke up the next day to try again.
My hope is that our daughter, along with the sheets and clothes and twinkle lights, along with the memories of adventures and friends, brings to college this feeling, that even when not getting it perfect, even when we’re not at all sure what to do, the magic is to keep going, to face things, and to do our best to do better.
I guess that’s what I’ll be doing here at home, too.
