Constable: A happy time — with a side of sadness
My memory of being dropped off at college consists of me shaking my parents' hands (which was our family custom at the time) and waving as Dad and Mom drove off. It didn't dawn on me then that things would never be the same.
But as Cheryl and I drop off our 18-year-old twin sons at college, we know. We schedule our “last family meal” the Saturday before Ross leaves for California. He requests the sushi place he likes. For our “last family meal, minus Ross,” Ben opts for the Mexican restaurant we frequented when our boys were little.
At the end of each evening, we encourage (force) the boys and their 15-year-old brother, Will, to toast marshmallows in the backyard for one last time as Cheryl and I hope that it really isn't the last time.
“Man, we have two kids in college,” my wife says out of the blue on Wednesday afternoon as we drive back from dropping Ben in Wisconsin.
“Remember those days?” I note, as we pass a grade school with little kids, dwarfed by their backpacks, walking home in packs.
We think back to dropping Ross and Ben off for that first day of kindergarten. Ross didn't want to leave us, so we made up this little story about a small plastic bumblebee from the toy chest. We told him to keep it in his pocket. If he ever got scared, he could give it a squeeze, know that we were with him in spirit, and that he could “bee brave.”
Knowing that Ross now is two time zones and 2,000 miles away, we parents are the ones who need to “bee brave” now.
Ben gives us both hugs that last a little longer than usual and assures us that he's got everything under control as we wave goodbye. Ross sends us a reassuring text. We are confident that they can do this.
People ask if my wife cries. A few ask if I cry. We don't. We've worked for 18 years to get to this point and we have been looking forward to this moment. Still, my wife admits to a feeling of longing on the flight back from L.A., knowing that Ross would be so far away. And she briefly gets a bit teary-eyed when hugging Ben goodbye. Our 2003 minivan seems particularly empty as we drive home from Wisconsin on Wednesday afternoon.
The bright skies give way to rain clouds, then back to bright sunshine, and then sprinkles reappear. The weather meshes with our moods. We're happy. We're sad. We're happy again.
We realize that our parenting job doesn't end with Ross and Ben just because they are in college. We've had one phone call with Ross and a few text messages in the week since he's been gone. We text Ben when we get home, and expect him to communicate about as much as his brother.
We know that Will, the sophomore in high school, misses his brothers. He doesn't seem all that appreciative of the extra parental attention coming his way. Family dinners for him now mean eating alone with his parents. He adjusts and we adjust.
I make cookies by myself, probably for the first time in my life, to send in a care package to Ross. I do the same last night for Ben.
The worrying we used to do about who our boys were with, what they were doing and when they'd be home is still with us, but our ability to do anything about it is pretty much gone. I envy my parents for having no way to keep tabs on me in college except for a Sunday night phone call. With the 24/7 communications options available to us, we live under the tyranny of unbridled communication freedom.
Ross and Ben will turn 19, their first birthday without us, before Ben comes home for Thanksgiving. It probably will be mid-December before we see Ross, as time and money hinder his ability to fly home for every holiday. We've made reservations for the parents weekend in October to visit Ben. Ross is prohibitively far away for the parents-weekend visit.
“They'll come home but it will never be the same,” says my mom, who's already been down this road with me and my siblings. We're happy, thrilled really, about it all. But we don't seem as happy about sending them off to college as they do about going. Mostly, we're just grateful that we've got three more years before Will leaves the nest.