Tag: family

Everything is about to change

August 17th, 2022

Our son’s room is half packed. His door is open and he’s not here.

He moves out tomorrow. Early in the morning, we’ll drive him the two and a half hours to Charlottesville. We’ll cart duffle bags and laundry baskets full of clothes and Twin XL linens to his dorm room, help him unpack, maybe run around buying stuff we forgot. And then we’ll drive away. I’ll likely sob. He’ll wave and say “SEE YA!” then start his new life.

It’s strange to simultaneously celebrate and mourn not being needed anymore. As parents, our job is to prepare our children to leave us. He feels ready to go out on his own, so I think we’ve maybe done that. And that feels good, and I’m super proud of him and excited for him. The whole world is out there to discover! But it’s hard to let go. His door will stay open after tomorrow, and he won’t come back home to close it. There will only be three of us at the dinner table each night. Tubbles will walk around meowing, looking in every room for him. She won’t find him anywhere. I’ll scratch his Reeses Puffs, American cheese, and bagel requests off my grocery list template.

He’s out with friends right now on his last day. A couple of them have already moved into their dorms at the college here in town. Others will scatter across the east coast in the coming weeks. When he comes home this evening, we’ll go out to dinner together, and he’ll like be packing deep into the night.

At 7 am, we’ll drive away with a car full of him and his stuff. And then we’ll drive home empty.

Good thing we still have our daughter at home.
College orientation

July 2nd, 2022

I took our son to the University of Virginia in Charlottesville for orientation Thursday and Friday, and I wanted to go back to school again just so I could hang out there and be a student among the greenery and bricks and columns and trees. Campus is beautiful. I love it there. I hope he will too.

Hydrangeas and random column capitals around grounds

A literary society 😍

The Rotunda is the heart of the University of Virginia campus, and I can’t get enough of it.

I love my new wide angle lens.

Courtyard next to the Rotunda

I can’t remember all the architectural terms, but I adore the details. I know the columns are Corinthian, and then something about teeth for the little blocks under the eaves…

Rotunda pool

The Rotunda in morning light

I wandered around town and found a cute place for coffee

Incoming first-years getting oriented on the lawn

I didn’t cry too much while we were there; tears welled up a few times, and my heart swelled with excitement and pride, but no full on waterworks. I’m not expecting the same for move-in day.
Slow then fast

May 20th, 2022

Our son graduates from high school tomorrow. A few days after that, we’ll leave for a family vacation to Iceland — our son’s destination choice for his graduation trip. Less than a month after that, I’ll take him to the University of Virginia for orientation. Then dorm furnishings, clothes for school, registration, and mid-August, move-in. We’ll drive him the two and half hours away, drop him off with all his stuff, wave goodbye and cry a lot, and not see him again until the holidays. We’ll come home to his open bedroom door, silence in his room instead of the sound of his mechanical keyboard clacking and him laughing on his headset with his gaming friends, and our cat Tubbles wandering the house lost and meowing, wondering where he is.

When the kids were small, it was unimaginable that they’d ever be not little, that they’d ever not need us so much. It seemed their childhoods would take — and last — forever.

These past few months, I’ve known these summer days were coming. These end-of-high school days. I felt a sense of waiting and anticipation, but it was comfortable. Things happened slowly and normally; an email reminder here or there from the school, college applications, weeks of waiting for a reply, then the reply, and then nothing really happening except us sending a check to UVA. This was fine. I was in no rush.

Now, suddenly, everything is happening, and it’s happening fast.
The stuff of life

May 7th, 2022

We’re headed to Greensboro today to buy a suit for our son. His prom is next weekend, and he’s going, and I guess the kids don’t rent tuxedos these days? I don’t know, I’m just along for the ride.

Weekend after next, our son graduates high school. Twelve weeks after that, we’ll pack him up and drive him to college. A few months ago, I wrote about our visit to UVA. It turns out that was his top choice for colleges, and after a long and stressful wait, on March 18, he got his acceptance letter into the School of Engineering and Applied Science, where he will study computer science. I might have squealed. When I hugged him, I could feel him shaking. He wanted this very badly, maybe more than he’s ever wanted anything. He worked hard in high school for good grades and high scores. His voice shook when he told us he was in, and his whole body trembled in thrill and relief. He fell back onto his back on his bed and smiled.

He won’t be able to take a car his first year, which means he’ll be two and a half hours away with no means of getting home. He’s excited about this. He hates long car rides anyway, and told us not to be offended, but he didn’t expect to be coming home a lot anyway. He wants to go off and become himself. I want that for him, too. But I also want to hang out with him and hear about school and his classes and what books he’s reading and who his friends are and what his roommate is like and what does he think of it all? Does he like it?

Meanwhile, our daughter got her drivers license on Monday. She takes herself to school and swim practice now. No more bubble tea runs together after practice on Thursdays. No more early morning “Can we go to Starbucks? Can we go to Panera?” on the way to school from the pool. We did ride together last night to get takeout, and she comes home between all her activities, which I wasn’t sure would happen. But, in two years, she will graduate and leave too. After 18 years of our kids in the house, suddenly they’re going to be gone.

I feel many feelings. I feel joy and pride. I feel sadness and loss. I feel hope and excitement for their futures, and who they are, and who they become. I feel nostalgia for their soft round cheeks and sweet toddler voices. I feel all the contrasting emotions, and it feels deep and right. This is the stuff of life.
My role models

January 6th, 2022

I looked up the definition of inspire today. I wanted to know, if I were to answer the question, “Who inspires you?” that I knew precisely what question I was answering.

Before looking it up, I had two thoughts about what it means to feel inspired. The first is an onrush of awe and a sense of enormous potential. That kind of inspiration comes with a feeling of tapping into to the divine, and it fills me with gratitude and wonder.

I wasn’t sure if that’s actually inspiration, though, because it doesn’t necessarily come with any sort of change after it happens. For a question like, “Who inspires you?” I thought inspiration might not be what I was thinking at first — a feeling of awe and beauty and wonder — but instead that it should include an element of action. If someone inspires me, it seems like they should make me change my behavior.

It turns out that inspiration is both of those things:

in·spire v. 1. To affect, guide, or arouse by divine influence. 2. To fill with enlivening or exalting emotion. 3.a. To stimulate to action; motivate. b. To affect or touch.
The American Heritage College Dictionary Third Edition

So, that’s not helpful! Except in the sense that it bought me some time because I’m really terrible at answering questions like “what’s your favorite” or “who inspires you.”

For the first type of inspiration, the one that fills with enlivening or exalting emotion, creators inspire me. Being moved by beauty or excellence is one of life’s greatest pleasures, and people who create are my heroes. When I experience an exquisite work of fiction, painting, cinema, drama, musical composition, songwriting, photography, writing, or comedy, I am filled with wonder. Artists inspire me. They help me see the glory of the human mind and how we fit in with each other and with the world.

For the second type of inspiration, the one that stimulates action and motivates, this one is as important as the first, but in a completely different way. People who spark change lead by example; they are role models simply by existing in the world and being who they are. They exhibit behaviors we can observe, be affected by, see the consequences of, and then emulate ourselves. I have dozens of role models who are close to me in my life who inspire me in this way. I will not name them here because the list would be too long, and each person inspires different parts of my behavior: humor, humility, candor, tact, communication.

But the people closest to me, the ones who live in my house with me, and who I’m lucky enough to have in my life on a daily basis, are the ones who inspire me most. My husband inspires kindness and generosity. Our kids inspire humor and honesty. All three of them motivate me to be a better person. And when I say inspire in this case, I mean that every day, I edit my behavior to act differently and better because of them.

This is my entry for the Bloganuary challenge, day 6: Who is someone who inspires you and why?
Fun for a lifetime

November 7th, 2021

I took our daughter and her friend to see Harry Styles last weekend at Madison Square Garden in New York, and the trip was a top five favorite parenting experience. We drove under crisp October skies on highways lined with forests of pumpkin orange and saffron yellow. Leaves fluttered against blue sky as 18-wheeler winds buffeted the trees, the light was golden, and I felt like could pull over anywhere along our trip through Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, or New Jersey to go apple picking.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the weekend and what was so special about it, and the thing that stands out the most is that, aside from my bonus time with my girlfriend in NJ who let us use her driveway, which meant I got to hug her and see her house and meet her husband and eat amazing fresh Jersey everything bagels, which I’m still thinking about and craving, the thing that stands out besides that time is that the whole point of the weekend was for the girls. My attention was solely on them and doing whatever they wanted for three whole days. And that was really fun. We could stop whenever and wherever they wanted to eat; we could fill the time we had however they wanted to fill it. I had no competing objectives. Whatever they wanted to do, I would help them do it. You want to get Harry merch? Yup, let’s get a snack in you and go stand in line. You hungry for lunch? Cool, Erica told me about a sushi place nearby. You want to walk to Times Square? Get Ben & Jerry’s ice cream? Walk to the Target on W 34th to look for sunglasses for your costume? Sure, yep, we can do all of those things.

The girls dressed in their costumes (tutus, fairy wings, and haloes over the homecoming dresses they didn’t wear to homecoming since they went to the concert instead) and wanted to take photos for their friends, so we found a wall outside our hotel that was covered in greenery and we used that for a backdrop. I shot photos for them, walked around with them, carried their vaccine cards, watched their stuff while they wandered around the arena before the show, took more photos for them inside the arena, and then relished every second of the show where I could hear them dying and going to heaven with every note played, every word sung, every move danced. As part of the encore, he played the song they most wanted him to play, a song they didn’t really truly expect they’d get to experience, a never-released song he hasn’t played on this tour, and which he hasn’t played live in three years. They screamed and videoed and were awestruck and could not believe their luck.

On the 8 hour drive home, they were both quiet with their heads against the car windows. They relived the experience with their airpods in, watching the videos, listening to albums, combing through the 100+ photos I had airdropped to them. After we returned home, the friend’s Grandma emailed to tell me she asked her granddaughter if it had been everything she hoped for. She told her grandma, it was everything and even more.