My son came home last week after his first weeks away at college. It
is obvious he doesn’t need us anymore, well; accept for the checkbook, of course.
That was the goal, right? What surprised me was the incredible sweetness of the moment.
Although certainly tasted by millions before me and millions with me and millions after
me, it is so often unmentioned, it took my breath away a bit.
In all our yearlong preparations for the event, of buying linens on
sale and my last desperate shopping with him to make sure he had “everything he
needed,” as if his need to have compared at all with my need to give, I didn’t
give much thought to the things already there – the things that can’t be bought
and that take years to build. In my moments saying good-bye, and then hello again, it is
the intangibles that come to the forefront. They give warmth more than the down comforter
I carefully made his dorm room bed with, reminding him that I hoped its warmth would
remind him of his family.
Standing on the walkways I too had walked as a college freshman, I
suddenly became immensely grateful his Dad and I were still married, that we could share
that moment together, that our son could spring from a place where things were calm and
not have complex arrangements to make in his or our behalf.
He and I ate lunch together in the large cafeteria connected with
his dorm, and no one said hi. No one knew us at all and we didn’t know anyone.
Knowing the next day I would be on my way home and he would be entering that large crowd
by himself, making his way, I was grateful for every Sunday we had gotten up and gone to
church and that I knew he knew he was never really alone.
Taking on classes and making new friends, I was grateful to all who
had filled those roles for him in the past; many who would keep in touch, reminding him
who he is and what his promise is. Still, that sweetness, it transcended gratitude and was
wholly unexpected. The intangible became tangible. Walking through the sun swept stacks of
the glass encased college library, I could taste it and feel it. It was a confirmation
that all the good things in our society really work, that this child was really ready.
I guess I hadn’t expected those ideals to go much past belief.
I don’t say this to make anyone feel sad whose life hasn’t turned out as they
planned. I grieve with you on all your lost hopes. I say it just to share it, to let you
know it is out there, that it really exists. It caught me wholly unsuspected.