There are certain milestones experienced in life that signify you are getting older. I am steadily racking up these watershed events like an extreme couponer gathering Sunday paper inserts. These touchstones include walking on the beach and discovering you’re wearing black socks with sandals, acknowledging that Metamucil is one of the four food groups, and having 68 pairs of reading glasses stashed throughout the house. The most recent reminder that the grim reaper is salivating over my aging behind is taking my oldest daughter to college. Katie is my adventuresome child. She sees herself climbing peaks in Nepal, teaching yoga to Native American preschoolers, or snowboarding in Norway, all thanks to a grant from the National Endowment of Daddy. Her two criteria for college were first, it had to be out of the South (“I can’t see myself living out life as a bit part in Steel Magnolias”) and second, it had to be in a big city ( translated in dad speak to high rents, high crime, and high anxiety for parents). After an extensive search and expensive tour she applied to and was accepted at a small liberal arts school in Chicago, home of the White Sox, Bank of America marathon, and the highest coed kidnap and ransom rate in the country ( okay, maybe a bit of an exaggeration on that last one).
In a merciful act of benevolence, mainly due to the 14 hour drive between Augusta and Chicago, we decided to fly to our destination. I initially wanted to drive to save money but my wife educated me on my idiocy.
“But honey, we can carry all her stuff in the car.”
“It’s a 14 hour drive.”
“ But plane tickets are expensive.”
“It’s a 14 hour hour drive.”
“We can have a bonding road trip experience.”
“It’s a 14 hour drive.”
“We will have a car in Chicago.”
“It’s a 14 hour drive and if you want to live you will go on the Delta website right now and book 3 tickets.”
“Yes dear.”
So off to the airport and college. There are some things a dad shouldn’t do with his soon to be freedom obsessed daughter, like shop for bathing suits and discuss tattoos. One of those things is going through airport security together. I have discovered that you learn some things that may have been better left unknown. I trailed behind my daughter as one of Augusta’s finest TSA agents waived her through the metal detector. The loud shriek of the machine unceremoniously signaling some adorned metal pierced the haze of my “way to early a flight” mental fog. Katie stepped back through the device and looked confusedly at the agent.
“Any jewelry, watches, stuff in your pocket?”
“Uh...no sir. Oh wait, what about this?” She pulled back her recently coifed hair uncovering her right ear revealing an array of ear studs previously unbeknownst to her papa. I looked with amazement at my wife.
“Did you know about this?” I inquired, already knowing the answer.
Katie rolled her eyes in that “Oh dad get a grip” sort of way and carefully removed her metal ear candy gingerly placing the decorations in the offering plate like bowl. She proceeded back through the detector as I held my breathe not wanting any other renegade piercings to be revealed. The machine was generously silent this go around and Katie reloaded her ear after retrieving her decorations. I just shrugged my shoulders, smiled at the guard while muttering something about always being the last to know things and continued to the gate.
We got to Chicago, settled in our hotel room and ventured off to the college campus. I had already retrieved a map of campus, not to be efficient but to find out where all the bathrooms were, so it was off to meet the roommate. One of the great shocks I had as a dad, and an older dad to boot, was the number of co-ed dorms on campuses now. In fact, single sex dorms seem to be as popular as liberals at a tent revival meeting, and as rare. There is nothing more comforting to a dad then to walk down the hall of his demure 18 year old’s dorm and come face to towel with a 6 foot 5, 285 pound ex con masquerading as a freshman linebacker fresh from his weekly shower. He seemed to take it all in stride smiling like a cheshire cat who had just eaten twelve mice. I casually mentioned to the half clothed behemoth that I was a small arms dealer for a Middle East consortium and wondered if he had seen the concealed weapons permit I had dropped somewhere. Times are indeed changing, but not always for the best.
After bumping into Bubba the love behemoth, I cautiously wandered into my daughter’s dorm room apprehensive about what I would find. Pleasantly surprised, and definitely relieved, I found 3 girls, one being her roommate (a female thank God). Her roomie was a Vietnamese native who grew up in Norway and went to boarding school in Sweden and was now making her first trip to the US. I’m not kidding here. I couldn’t have made that up. Her two friends were equally as cosmopolitan as they were from Malawi (I’m not even sure where Malawi is!) and Palestine. Boy how times have changed. When I went to college my roommate was a beer gutted, tobacco chewing NASCAR lovin‘ Billy Bob from Bellbuckle Tennessee. Times are indeed changing, and this time most assuredly for the best.
We next ventured to the academic hub of the campus and reviewed her upcoming schedule. I was pleased that I recognized the courses she was enrolled in because as I perused the catalog I spotted several areas of study that were somewhat foreign. It seems that some college kids revel in such offerings as Medieval chants and charms, cooking for one, badminton (competitive), and dog whispering. What a marvelous way to spend $30,000! I could feed half of Rwanda for what some will spend on learning how the Harry Potter series parallels ancient Greek mythological archetypes.
The dining hall was next on the world wind tour. Here the toughest decisions of the day were vetted. The variety of meal plans rivaled the number of insults in a “What Not to Wear” TV show. The plans, as best I could tell, could be broken down into three categories: vegetarian (basically bird feed and tofu), burgers and fries and more burgers and fries, and the elite “hogs are us” plan that features a feeding trough that would make Golden Corral jealous. This is where the notorious freshman fifteen ( and I don’t mean hours studying each day) finds it’s fulfillment. After viewing the smorgasbord laid out for the students I felt a more conservative estimate was a freshman forty! I remember eating meals cooked on a hot plate and thinking Raman noodles were a gourmet addition to macaroni and cheese.
The bookstore was our next stop and I swear it took me 30 minutes of purposeful wandering before I found any books. After wading through jerseys, coffee mugs, hoodies, posters, banners, jewelry, t-shirts, and the ticket counter for football games, I finally came upon the actual textbooks. It was like they were the whacky uncle everyone tried to forget, shoved in the back of the room. I noticed that some of the text were prepackaged and set aside in sacks above the shelves. They had various students names on them and I assumed that there was some service the bookstore did for those wise folks who pre ordered their texts. The young clerk corrected me when I asked and said that those were the books for the scholarship athletes. They packaged them up so they could simply wander down to the bookstore and conveniently pick up their books for the entire semester. The only problem was that some of the packages were from 3 semesters ago and had never been picked up! Some things never change no matter how old you get.
We wandered back to the dorm and Katie somewhat unceremoniously hinted that it was time for her mother and I to leave. We knew we would see her the next day so this was not the obligatory mushy goodbye. This was more “I’ve had about enough of parental bonding to last me the whole semester so let me begin to pave my own way” kind of goodbye. The not so subtle hint was appropriately received and Susan and I walked back to our hotel. I noticed that the walk back was much less strenuous than our walk to the college that morning, and I discovered that it was mainly due to my much lighter wallet!
The next morning I went out for my mandatory run. Anytime I travel I have to do a run as it is as much a tradition as getting terrified by cabbies who speak no English. Running is by far the best way to see a community and get a feel for the nature of folks who populate the streets at 6 am. I have had a number of experiences ranging from dodging hung over transvestites in Las Vegas to being chased by a rat like Lhasa Apso in Boston who thought I was a moving pork chop. In Lake Forest the only thing I had to dodge was the heavy fog of wealth hanging over the community. This is a very prosperous suburb of Chicago where Jaguars and Mercedes are as prevalent as Mononucleosis in a coed dorm. Even the dog houses had manicured yards and pea pebble driveways. As I sweated in my Target shorts and Wal-mart t-shirt, I fantasized about who lived in these mansions. My generation would suppose some titan of business or publishing baron sojourned there whereas my daughter’s contemporaries would immediately think they were inhabited by pimp my crib rappers named Sweet Ice-T and Biggie Butt Jello for Brains.
After my run, Katie met us for a short trip to Target. Now for those of you who are college move-in illiterate, if they don’t have it at Target, you don’t need it. This is in contrast to real life where most of what you don’t need is at Target. The only problem with this outing is that in Beverly Hills East the nearest Target was a 30 minute cab ride. My blood pressure rose in concert with the cab’s meter and soon I realized that I could have bought half the store for what it cost me to get there. I do feel a sense of joy in paying a cabbie's son’s Fall tuition for college. Once at Target we completed our purchases (actually I sat in one of the Lazy Boy pleather recliners while Susan and Katie scorched the credit card.)
Back at the dorm it was finally time to say our goodbyes. Katie knew she had to be quick because her mother was a skinny minute from a complete melt down. I on the other hand was a rock solid bastion of stability...Not! Combine the posture of a jelly fish and the composure of Jimmy Swaggert admitting he was smoozing prostitutes and you get a pretty good idea of where I was at. After all, this was my first born, the first fruit of my loins, my genetic legacy, my baby. Of course I shouldn’t have blathered those exact terms to her at that moment as she could only look on in epic embarrassment and vow never to bring us back to college. Somehow we struggled through and she vaulted up the dorm stairs eagerly anticipating the rest of her life, and Susan and I skulked slowly, purposelessly back to the hotel.
There is such extremes of emotion that arise in moments of transition like this that you can only stand back and let them flow through you and topple whatever is in their existential way. I rejoice for her present and future but worry about all the inevitable heartaches and mistakes punctuating that journey. Her mother and I know we have done our best to poison her mind with our morals and foundational beliefs, but we worry about what she will eventually choose. I am excited about the limitless possibilities she will encounter, but I cringe at the cruelty of the real world. This Yin and Yang, this stratospheric struggle of opposites, this dichotomy of possibilities all create a cognitive dissonance of emotions in parents. We love our children limitlessly and want to have them close and protect them, yet our goal is to raise them to be independent from us. Kids foraging their own way with confidence and purpose is a sign of good parenting, yet giving up physical and emotional bonds is massively difficult. Going off to college is one of those transition points, like the beginning of the mythological heroes quest, that teaches both the parent and the child valuable lessons about purpose and meaning. It’s a time of great joy and great apprehension, but it is those pressure points that create a new substance. The diamond is born from the pressure of the ages and so a new creature, your child, is created anew from the challenges and decisions required in this fresh chapter in their lives. Likewise, parents enter a new stanza in the song that is our lives, and we now also have a chance to make that soaring melody one of triumph and celebration. Or we could just let it die in a pitiful, debt ridden, miserable, regret laden whimper like I suspect anyone who was on Toddlers and Tiaras would do. Anyway, I have no doubt that the next six years will be the happiest four years of college Katie will ever experience, and for that I am both overjoyed and blessed.
