(Written August 2021)
We just helped our youngest return for his final year of college at Gonzaga University. We moved our older two boys into college only one time each, but somehow, we have helped the youngest move in three times (four, if you count the year my sister-in-law and my middle son helped him move). I guess that is typical for the baby. And he did transfer schools after his first year, unlike the other two who started and finished at the same school.
Just as each son was his own person with his own interests, each good-bye was unique. Our oldest son was lured in to the Citadel Military College with a full scholarship. It was bad enough that he was the first to leave the nest, but to drop him off for a less-than-fun college experience just about broke me. Would he survive? Do they really need to shave off that beautiful thick wavy hair? Did we do all we could to prepare him for this, mentally and physically? Can you ever be prepared for this? Good Lord, are these dorm rooms habitable? Will we be the parents who get the call during “hell week” that he is done, finished, throwing in the towel?
Well, he survived and even thrived! And just like that, he transformed from a scrawny freshman with no hair into a buff young man who, in the same weekend, commissioned into the Air Force with a pilot training slot, graduated with honors, and married his high-school sweetheart.
The second son took a different path which pulled my heartstrings in a different way altogether. I had looked forward to his college days. He was the fraternity type whose interests and disposition were more familiar to me. He had already left home as a high school junior after being accepted into a STEM boarding school. That just about wrecked me. So, somehow, I was thinking it would be nice to have him in college…a little closer to home and more freedom to visit as often as he wanted. But then, he decided to go to the University of Washington (while we were living in South Carolina)! Unlike the others, where dorm items are purchased and stockpiled over summer months, this college move consisted of a flight, a few days of shopping, and a terrifying tearful good-bye. I truly strived to hold it together.
That same year, my oldest was in pilot training, my middle on the West Coast, and my youngest was a Junior in high school. That was the year I was first diagnosed with cancer. There were so many reasons my husband and I decided we should move back to Washington where he grew up, but being closer to our middle son was a big reason. And our youngest was excited about the move…until he wasn’t. He figured out a way to graduate high school a year early and head to Clemson! So, I was moving closer to the one on the West Coast and leaving the baby on the East Coast!
Then, through a merciful act of God, in the midst of continuing battles with cancer, the sweet Lord saw to it that our oldest was assigned to fly out of the air base just miles from where we moved! And it just kept getting better. Mid-way through my youngest’s freshman year, he decided he wanted to be with the rest of us in Washington and made his way cross-country, transferring to Gonzaga University in Eastern Washington.
That was a very long way of saying, don’t fret about sending your kids off to college. Whether they are attending a small school nearby, a trade school, a huge university across the country, or a military school or academy, it is part of the design. From the day they are born, our job is to prepare them for the world. While this may seem like the end, it is just the beginning of the next chapter which will likely unfold differently than you imagine or expect.
My husband and I have found that being empty nesters is really quite lovely. And we found that they will come back, and leave, and come back, and leave…and then there are grandkids!
Until next time, I am Living BETWEEN THE SCANS.
Between the Scans 