The posts from friends near and far dropping their students off at college have started coming in. Whether they are young people I personally know or the children of friends of mine from earlier in my life, I feel the anticipation, the promise, the sense of so many possibilities as these young people embark on this stage of life. I have always loved this time of year on social media because I love the photos of first days of school—whether it is preschool, Kindergarten, middle or high school—school was a place I absolutely adored. And so, late August/early September always holds excitement and a sense of new beginnings for me. What is different this year is my understanding of the polarities held within the college photos. Sure, I was the mom that barely made it to the car before she started crying after dropping each child off for their first day of Kindergarten (okay, it wasn’t just Kindergarten). I had a bit of a sentimental tug with each new school year—the true but tired feeling that these children just grow so very fast.
What I see now when I look at these wonderful photographs of toothy smiles on first-year college students, cars packed full of more stuff than seems could fit in a dorm room, and tight embraces with parents is the other side of the hope and excitement. It is the loss and grief those parents are holding right alongside the deep swell of pride and delight in this child who is now a young adult. I remember my parents’ tearful goodbyes when they left me on the 7th floor of Thurston Hall, 175 miles from home a few decades ago. I cried, too. I just didn’t have the same feeling of letting go of this child whom you saw take their very first breath, who you rocked to sleep countless times, whose boo boos you kissed, whose accomplishments you celebrated, whose sadness you held as your own. After 18 years of the most unconditional and all-encompassing love you could ever feel (and the most heart-wrenching anxiety you could experience and everything in between), sending this child out into a world that can be heartbreakingly beautiful and painfully cruel, though mostly is somewhat more mundane than those extremes, well, it’s just hard.
We have 15 days before Z moves in to his dorm. Fifteen. His priority at the moment is not spending time with us, in this house, but saturating himself in the company of his friends. I love this. I am so delighted that he has such a great group of friends. A core group of them have been friends since Z moved to the public school in 6th grade. Others have joined over the years. They missed out on so much, having COVID hit right in the middle of their freshmen year of high school. This past year, it seems, they have been making up for lost time. Going into the city to see concerts. Spending hours playing what Z described to me as “the cyberpunk version of Dungeons and Dragons.” And the gaming. My nights and weekends will not be the same without Z yelling out commands and reprimands to his friends. I hope they stay connected throughout their lives. Even if they don’t, they have given each other so much, helped each other learn what it means to connect and care and love. To play together and laugh until you are crying, to have shared goals and experience the thrill of accomplishment together. The greatest joy of being human is connection. And Z has had that with these friends.
That loss and grief that parents hold when they send their child to college? I didn’t think about it until early to mid May. Once the college deposit was sent in, the decision made, AP exams completed, and the focus shifted to Senior Week. I could stop and take it all in. And suddenly, I realized all of this meant Z was leaving. I know it probably sounds strange if you haven’t hit this phase of parenting. Or maybe even if you have and you don’t hold the sadness in the same way that I do. But I didn’t really get it until then. Because of course I didn’t. That is what it is to be a mom, right? You make sure these forms are in, your child remembers this deadline, you pay this fee, you set up this college visit, you ask over and over and over if the recommendations/transcript/SAT scores/AP scores have been requested and sent to the right places, you go and go and go. And the focus is all on them. Which is what you want, how you have set it up. And you don’t stop for a moment to think, if they choose this college, they will be 452 miles from me. But if they choose this college, they will be 25.6 miles from me. Because it is not about you, but them. And so when they do choose the college that is up the highway from you rather than across eight states, you suddenly realize that though you had been pushing for the one that is farther away, you are so relieved they will be 35 minutes and not 10 hours away. And that leads you to realize that they will no longer be in the next room over at night. That they will have to finally figure out how to get out of bed when the alarm goes off. That you will no longer be woken up by the smell of pizza cooking in the oven at 1 am. On a school night. And that is when the wave of grief washes over you with a power you had not anticipated. You stood in the ocean of mothering for 18 years. You withstood so many storms and tides, currents and waves. But you didn’t see this wave forming, far out at sea. You didn’t notice it until it was almost upon you, cresting white and crashing down, knocking you off balance and tumbling you over and over, landing you on the shore. Your sight was always on your children.
My friends who have already walked this path tell me that the intensity of the loss fades quickly. That it is replaced by a new sweetness when you see your young adult again. A new phase of your relationship starts to unfold and in that newness, you find a different kind of connection that quickly replaces the loss you felt. I have no doubt this is true and I am grateful to have others point out the path ahead. But the only way to get there is to go through this loss, to not fight the power of the wave cresting behind me, but allow it to take me to shore.
Photos by Dana Giuliana