Seven days left
The college family moon
When I was about halfway through my pregnancy with Z, my husband and I decided to get away for a weekend. The week before we left, I had my 20-week ultrasound and had been surprised to learn that we were having a boy. I had already named the baby, who I was convinced would be a girl. We quickly shifted our thinking and when we left for our trip a few days later, we were back to full excitement for the upcoming arrival of this new little person. Going on a vacation before the baby arrived was important for us. I was in graduate school then and taking time away from my work was often difficult. While we both intellectually understood our lives would change dramatically once this baby arrived, none of our close friends had children, so it was all a bit abstract. A babymoon, (though I don’t recall if that term was one we knew then), was just what we needed to get in some uninterrupted time, away from work and school before our lives turned upside down and inside out.
A few weeks after the college decision was made this past April, we decided to plan a trip. With several things on the calendar, it ended up falling the week before Z is leaving for college. I had several moments of wondering what we were thinking planning a trip right before he starts college, but as it got closer, my anxiety lessened and I felt like some part of me knew this was exactly what we needed. Uninterrupted time, away from work and friends and the demands of the quickly upcoming school year.
We packed up the car early on a Wednesday morning and headed north to Canada. From the time our youngest was 18 months old, we had been camping every summer at the same campgrounds. One of our regular activities was stopping in a small town near the Canadian border that had a large candy store and a great restaurant. We hadn’t been for several years; a combination of COVID and the boys getting older and having more time pressures. We decided to stop and have lunch at the restaurant and recreate some photos from many years earlier.
Time is a strange and wild thing. I can’t quite get my mind around the fact that the boys in these photos are the same, with seven years in between. And of course, seeing my teenagers standing there on those same stairs caused a little tug on my heart, a little sting in my eyes, that I quietly felt and then let go. I love these teenage boys with all my heart. And I miss the 6-, 8-, and 11-year-old boys that were last on those stairs. When the earlier photos was taken, I had no thoughts of college, no awareness of what I might feel when we returned with an 18, 15, and 13 year old. I imagined, likely, that we would be back the following year. We did return the next few years, but didn’t take photos on those stairs.
I am not sure any other relationship in my life has this way of superimposing the past on the future. When I look at my husband, who I have known since I was a teenager myself, I don’t have a clear picture of him at 20 or 25 or 30 that I remember with such bittersweetness. Perhaps it is because we have grown older together so the passage of time doesn’t seem quite as stark as with our children. My boys, of course, remember the little town, the staircase with the umbrellas, and the community pianos on each block of the main street. They gently mock my sentimentality about these things, only indulging some of the requests to recreate the past—photos are allowed, but no one will play the piano. We have a nice lunch, get in the car, and continue our journey. I think about car trips with younger children: the arguing, the impatience, the tears. Is it weird to say I almost missed it?
We arrived in this beautiful city. We took a walking tour, learned about the fascinating history, ate delicious food, took a ferry across the river, and climbed many, many stairs. Each day we have been here, someone close to me has taken their child to college. I have shared texts, felt the tightening in my chest as I see the beautiful photos of college dorm rooms, new roommates, proud parents and siblings. So much anticipation, so much excitement, so much promise and hope. And the heaviness, the wall of grief that is just behind mama’s beaming smile. I feel it all. I send the texts, I put my hand on my heart briefly to hold them all there. And then, I close it all up and go back to the beautiful scene unfolding in front of me: the family I have spent almost two decades carefully creating with my husband.
How does one even began to explain all that is held in these three humans? To distill into words the ways in which the past 18 years have shaped and defined who I am as a person, as a mother? I hope these boys know in their very core how deeply they are loved. How much has gone into raising them in the best way their father and I knew how. That these trips are a way of not just taking them to delightful and exciting places, learning about how people live in other countries, but of giving them experiences they will remember because of the connection they shared with each other and us. Like any parent, I want them to feel joy, happiness, contentment, purpose, and meaning in their lives. More than anything, I want them to know love and connection.
This young man leaves in one week. Seven days. We will bring him to his dorm, meet his roommates, perhaps take him out to lunch, and then have a slightly awkward goodbye as I try to hug him for somewhere between the amount of time he is comfortable with (probably three seconds) and the time I want (forever?). While I try not to cry, because he won’t want that, because new roommate awkwardness. While I try to wait until we are in the car. I can barely write this without audibly crying. I know this is all there, waiting, a wave of emotion cresting, building up power, ready to crash down and rush over everything.
I am immensely grateful for this time away. These last few days when we can deny the inevitability of next week. When it’s the five of us, as it has been for almost 14 years. This family that has been the center of my life since the day I saw the double pink line on the pregnancy test in June 2004. This has been our college family moon, time away to focus on our connection with each other before our lives change dramatically. Reminiscent, in a way, of that long weekend away when Z was a growing baby in my belly, an abstract baby to my husband and me. Unlike his birth 18 years ago, when I brought that sweet baby home, this time, I will leave him to create his own life, forge his own path. And at this moment, that feels immeasurably harder.