Freshmen

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been noticing all the pictures of moms and dads dropping their kids off at college. There’s usually a shot of Dad carrying boxes or Mom sitting on a newly made bed with the freshman. Every room looks the same to me. Every room exactly like Kaitlin’s room at Cedarville and Patrick’s at Belmont all those years ago. . .cleaner than it will ever be again. The smiles on everyone’s faces look strained and fragile, as if the slightest breeze could drift by and transform them into pools of tears. For the kids, it’s mostly nerves at so momentous a chapter of their life story being newly written. For the parents, I see the Herculean effort being put into those smiles. They want so much to be optimistic and supportive. . .when what they really want to do is grieve the end of something. But, that will have to wait, at least for the car ride home.

For Pam and me the car ride home was nearly unbearable. Cedarville was seven hours away, Nashville nine hours away. That’s a lot of grieving. I remember that first year we dropped Patrick off at Belmont being the worst of all move-in days, since it meant the dawn of our empty nest years. That particular nine hour drive would take us back to an empty house. I had barely pulled out of the parking lot when I decided that we should pull over onto a side street and sit for a minute to gather ourselves. It didn’t work. Pam cried all the way to Knoxville. The first two weeks back home felt like a wake. The silence in the house was deafening. Our first sit down meal as empty-nesters featured Pam abruptly leaving the table after the blessing!

But eventually we discovered that an empty nest wasn’t all bad. The emptiness ushered in a new freedom. To our profound relief, we discovered the happy news that after 20 years of raising two kids, we were still in love with each other. Our affection for each other had managed to survive the grueling ordeal of parenting, no small feat. So, our children weren’t the only ones having new chapters written. 

Still, although your kids ultimately leave your home, they never leave your heart. The worry that has been your constant companion since the day they were born doesn’t go anywhere. You still fret about everything that happens to them. They get a new job and you worry if they will lose it. They get married and you worry if they will be happy. You wonder if either of them will ever move back to Virginia. You wonder when that first grandchild will come. You don’t even want to think about how much you will worry once he/she does!

All of this is good and proper. Change is what makes life interesting. Nothing is eternal except our love for them. Everything else a crapshoot. 

And that freshman, tentatively smiling for the camera? You won’t even recognize them on graduation day.