The really hard part is coming, and I’m just not prepared for it.
Actually, thus far, it’s been easier to sort of compartmentalize it. Before I can worry about it, there are things that need to be worried about in advance of it. I’m talking, of course, about my daughter’s impending departure for college in the fall.
Obviously, over the past few years, there’s been no shortage of shit to worry about. The travails of 2020, 2021 and 2022 have already upended so much plan-making and reduced events that should have otherwise been milestones into muted footnotes. As I was keen to routinely point out for both of my children, these were not the halcyon high school days they’d been promised. While, true, they don’t necessarily know what they’ve been missing, I can’t help but feel that their generation has been completely cheated out of a wide array of crucial experiences, and there really isn’t anything to be done about it.
But my daughter leaving the nest and heading off for college was always going to happen. It’s been looming in the distance, for me, like Barad-dûr (look it up, sports fans) since the first day she opened up her big brown eyes. It’s been inevitable for so long, but suddenly it’s closer than ever. I wrote a comparable piece to this when she was on the verge of starting high school. That seems like five minutes ago. It's coming. It's real.
But, prior to that, there’s been the logistically complicated and emotionally intricate dance of determining where she is going to college. We spent months plotting trips and visiting schools and assessing impressions and tallying potential costs. But now, the applications are all done and sent off to schools both very near and worryingly far, both very familiar and entirely foreign.
We’re now just waiting to hear back from everyone. A couple of answers have already rolled in, but my daughter’s been fairly coy about what her preferences are, not wanting to opine aloud before all her viable options are made clear to her. I know I certainly have very specific ideas of where she should go, but I dare not express those, as yet, lest I poison the well, so to speak. Some hard discussions may have to take place, depending on how things shake out. Or not. Again, we are in the waiting period.
Once the final decision is made, however, I know that that’s when the cold, hard reality of the situation is going to drop on me like a goddamn anvil from out of the sky.
Does my daughter know that? I can’t say. I know she is zealously looking forward to starting the next chapter of her life and eagerly awaiting the host of new experiences the next phase is promising her. She is ready, clear-eyed and excited. It’s all good. She’s worked incredibly hard, has done remarkably well, and I am indescribably proud of her and all that she’s accomplished. This is how it should be.
But I know it's going to crush me.
Perhaps I’m reading too much into it, but almost on cue, she has become that much more attentive. She has always been incredibly sweet, but she seems more inclined, lately, to hook her arm within mine while we’re walking, to curl up next to me on the couch in the evenings, to ask me how I’m doing at any given moment of the day. She checks in. She wants me to be happy and okay with everything.
She must know that it’s on my mind. She can obviously tell that it’s going to devastate me when she goes.
When her little brother follows suit two years later, I doubt I’ll be able to even speak.
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