It’s four days before my son leaves for his freshman year of college. He’s chosen an amazing school with merit scholarships because he’s awesome and financial aid because I’m a teacher.
I always told my boys that they could do anything they wanted and be anything they wanted as long as they put the work in. And he did. 4.3 GPA, academic decathlon medalist, a good kid with good friends. His friends, actually both of my kids’ friends, are amazing. As a parent, you hope when they reach their teenage years they don’t do what YOU did in your teenage years. Oh dear god, I have apologized to my parents repeatedly. (Again, I’m so sorry for...well...yah, you know.) However, my kids both have these collections of friends who are aware of the world around them and actually want to make it a better place. They have fun together, they created this whole crew during the pandemic and stuck together playing games online and keeping each other sane. They are all so supportive of each other too. It’s weird but good. For now, I can be sated in the knowledge that the influences on my children are relatively positive and not destructive or ruinous. Of course, I could be totally wrong, but as a high school teacher, I’ve seen crappy teenage influences (mostly from students and not from teachers who are still employed) I’m pretty sure I’m right. I hope. I think. No, I’m good. My husband, Cameron likes to ask me if I’d rather be happy or right and I always answer “both”. Sigh...
Two days to go. He’s packed. Okay, he packed and I checked his three suitcases and then we had a little meeting and I sat on his bedroom floor and began pulling crap from under his bed. That was an hour of my life I won’t get back. “Oh my god! I’ve been looking for that!” was heard throughout our household. Oh goody. More stuff to pack. I taught him how to roll shirts and proper shoe placement and the phrase “We’ll just order it on Amazon” popped up again and again. Hmmm….I need to google a Target near his dorm…By the way, I gave him my other big suitcase and now he’s obsessed with weighing each one so it’s not over one hundred pounds. OMG, do you know how much it costs to check baggage?! WTF? Why does it cost $30 to check one bag but $220 to check three? I am afraid of math but even I can figure out that THAT is just stupid.
One day left. He said goodbye to his girlfriend of over four years. Think about that for just a moment: four years ago he was in eighth grade. They’ve been friends since six grade and have been connected at the hands, staring into each other’s eyes and telling each other how cute the other was for four years. They are the most amazing couple and they adore each other so much; they inspire each other to do their best; she did Academic Decathlon because of him (and won a gold in speech because she’s amazing and beautiful inside and out) and he joined the salsa team. Umm...dance, not the stuff on tacos. He doesn’t really like sauce on tacos but man, he likes to dance. Their last performance (still recorded because of the pandemic) they danced together and if they stay together, I’m totally playing that at their wedding. I once joked that good thing we had the pandemic so they would be used to face timing each other every night. Neither of them found that amusing. Seriously. They will be approximately 2852 miles from her college to his. Yah...I know. My heart hurts too. Her mom and I would love this to be it and for long-distance to work and all of that. I just have to wait it out I guess and hear how it goes. I want nothing more than for his heart NOT to break. And that’s basically all I want. Be happy and healthy and loved. That’s it. The rest is frosting.
4am. My alarms have been going off since 3:30am but I only went to bed three hours ago after sitting on my roof contemplating my motherhood over a glass of wine or three, waking up is hard to do-ooh-ooh-ooh. I sat by my firepit last night and went over checklist after checklist, his and mine, wondering what I have forgotten. His little brother (not so little - actually taller than me - only the cats are shorter than me) decided to stay up until we left. I think it was just the excuse he needed to play video games all night with his pals before his school started. I let it go. Pick your battles. He bought his big brother a going away D&D gift (seriously, I have no clue what the hell you do with twenty-sided dice) hugged him, and promptly fell soundly asleep on the couch the second we started heading out the door.
All packed up, his stepdad, my wonderful husband, Cameron, was packed up at 2am because he couldn’t sleep. He said it was just insomnia, but I know his love for this kid who chose him as a dad was so great, there was no way he was sleeping that night. You don’t get to pick your parents, but sometimes you get to pick the people who actually want to be there for you and Cam is there for them. So fabulously, incredibly there. He didn’t have to be and yet his love and support for them is beyond anything I could have asked for. I wouldn’t have married him if I didn’t think he’d be a good step-father or “Step-Cam” as the boys have always called him. We could only afford to have me take my son to college this far away from home (hello teacher salary) so leaving was so hard for my stoic Viking. However, after he dropped us at the airport, my son realized he had left his passport. And his social security card. And his laptop charger. And my sanity. And so Cam and his son got to hug one last time and he didn’t even complain when he had to come back to the airport twice.
To be continued...
No comments:
Post a Comment