college bound
by bam
i should have known, long ago, that i was marrying into a new religion. first clue came with the chair: the man i married was pining for a squat black chair, all arms and spindles, broad seat, gold medallion.
the gold medallion was everything: the crest of his college.
now up until that moment, i’d always thought my mate to be fairly sublime when it came to taste, certainly of aesthetic high-ground.
well, except for that spat in the sheets department, back on the day we were so-called registering, bride and groom let loose in downtown dry-goods store with clipboard and pen, feeding all domestic whims, checking off thises and thats.
till i got to the sheets, that is. the sheets with the rambling blue roses, and he ranted that he could never sleep in those, what with all the thorns.
instead, he held up a pack of blue-on-white pencil-lined percale. nothin’ jazzy there, so straight-forward i started to yawn. which apparently proved his point: one should sleep on spare canvas.
yeesh. you’d have thought he was going to bleed to death dozing, what with his vehement protest to my bed of roses.
anyway, as i was saying before tangling in that thorny tale, up till the chair plopped onto the tableau that tussle round the rosy sheets had been, far as i recall, our sole scuffle over domestic appointments.
he wasn’t serious, i thought half out loud, the day he held up the order form for the gold-medallion chair. he couldn’t be intent–could he?–on pulling up to porridge in a chair that shouted out his college DNA. okay, so maybe it whispered. mumbled words in latin. still…
to my mind at the time, he might as well have shown up for a wedding wearing a big ten sweatshirt. and so what if it wasn’t big ten, his fine old college. back then, before i understood the ins and outs, the intricacies of his brand of religion, i’d crossed off all college gear as the stuff of cheerleader wanna-bes.
in time, though, it began to sink in.
over the years, i’ve gotten good long looks at a beautifully educated mind. i’ve felt my jaw drop, and my heart go ker-plunk, as he pulled from the shelf some masterwork, and, before he even turned to the ink-scribbled page, he’d recite a line of utter poetry. even when the subject was, well, architecture, specifically the divine illumination of light pouring through a window.
back when our firstborn was four, we stopped for a road-trip repast in the yale cafeteria. we all laughed that the college tour had officially commenced.
our little one’s grandpa, who sat across the oak-slab table, scooping soft-serve vanilla ice cream from a bent metal cafeteria spoon, he simply beamed.
never too soon, he purred.
in the house where my boys are growing up, they’ve always known they were college bound, and not just any college, please. quite unlike the house where i grew up, where college came in just two flavors–in-state, or catholic and close enough to drive–this has all been quite an education. for me, mostly.
for years now, we’ve been swirling ever closer to today. we’ve caught a campus here and there, driving one way or another, never in too much of a hurry to stop and walk through gothic gates, genuflect at library circulation desks, imagine what it would be to pull up to some ivy-covered dorm and leave our boy to learn.
our firstborn has always been a thinker. and that’s not the bump-free way to be a kid.
years ago, late at night in the kitchen, as tears spilled down his cheeks and mine, i remember holding him, whispering, “sweetheart, it might be hard to be you as a kid, but it is going to be glorious to be you as a grownup.”
our firstborn, it’s long been said, was born to be in college. he knows no excitement like the thrill of a deeply-carved thought. has long checked out library books that few would dare to tackle, let alone consider summer reading.
he’s spent whole nights, dusk till dawn, with his desk light burning, unwilling to settle for less than his utter best, despite my pleas that he is perfect as is, and besides, he needs his sleep.
as he rounds the bend to end of junior year, he’s earned the grades to be able to consider the sorts of schools that i had never dreamed of.
and so, this morning at the crack of dawn, his bags were packed. his papa’s too.
their itinerary is a rich one; he is drawn, of course, to where the thinkers are.
my job here is to wait each night to hear whatever bubbles up for the boy i love, now walking the greenswards of his dreams. as, with each stop, the blurry outlines take on real-life edge, as he sees where shadow lifts and falls amid once gauzy colors.
last night i found myself in a vaulted-ceiling room, walls and beams carved from mahogany, the floors of slate and marble. standing there, amid a crowd, i faded out of conversation, began to think instead how this could be the world of which my firstborn someday might be wholly fluent.
i thought how, all these years, he has lived in a cocoon of our making. his every move i once knew. now, less so. but still i know the dips and bends in all the roads he travels. i’ve heard the voices of his teachers. i have come to love his friends like extra sons. know which one sips kambucha, which one favors sushi.
but now, as he drives from baltimore to philly, stops again in new york city, drives north to connecticut, then west to the berkshires, i understand his reach is stretching, and the lines on his map grow fainter to me.
he will soon know a world that i will grasp in tapped-out lines, and stories quickly told over the phone. but the phone will click when that call ends. and he will go on living, and i will too.
his world, i sense, i hope, i pray, will be far beyond mine.
i pray that he is never bound by the fears that have held me back, by all the second-guessing.
he is brushing up against the world of which he’s always dreamed. and i am home with his little brother, his little brother who cried hushed tears as the trunk was popped, suitcases hauled to the airport curb. we are practicing long distance, he and i.
life is shifting here. the life we dreamed is coming into focus.
i pray for him to fall deeply into the religion of his father, and his father’s father. he has what it takes to be a priest in that most scholarly calling.
i hear the whispers all around.
and should his wildest dream come true, i might even spring for the gosh-darn chair.
in my own way, i’ve gotten the religion.
this one’s mostly for his grandma, she who reads each word with such full heart. this one’s for all the ones who’ve gotten him to where he is, and where he’ll go beyond. this one too is for his papa. it’s not been without bumps, this college road. but i think we’ve hit the high road. be safe, be well, on your college-bound tour.
you have outdone yourself on this one. this is a truly outstanding column. it brings up wonderful memories. it is beautifully written. but, most of all, the dreams of years ago are coming true.
from the highest of high priests, the grand pubah of the college tour, your words above are sweet. it’s an honor to find your a to z, signing off, on my fumblings to try to wrap words around this great surging soup of hope and dreams and heart…..
Ginny shared your blog with me and I’ve read it with tears in my eyes. Letting go is difficult at best. As the mother of two sons I’ve been where you are now and wish I could tell you it will get easier. I cried for hours the day my youngest left for college – that was until he left for the Peace Corps in Africa. He then My added a year to his Peace Corps commitment and is now applying to law school. I’m doing the touring and Skyping my impressions to him. The best news is that the law schools are no more than a two hour car ride away! Best of luck with Will’s choice. I’m sure he will have many fine options. From Jamie (Ginny’s former principal)
oh, jamie, bless you for coming to visit. i have to say i do love the twist in your equation with you being the one doing the search, and SKYPING your impressions. i sit here racing to the computer before i go to sleep, when i first wake up, hoping to find an email with the latest impressions. but 16-year-old boys being 16-year-old boys, it seems he ran out of time at the last two schools, so i remain in the dark (save for his papa’s phone calls, filling me in on the smile quotient, however much will smiles, is likely how much he feels the BINGO at said school.)i can only look to the great soulful mamas before me, to understand that this is indeed a mountain we can climb and summit. it is the most glorious soup of profound emotion, blessed breathless excitement that what we’ve been tending in them is just about to reach the fruits, and at the same time finding it hard to reconfigure the architecture of our every day, which will mean three not four places set at the dinner table, a spotless bedroom, and none of the laughter that so often comes when they bound in the door, or tiptoe into the kitchen late at night for one of those glorious unplanned long conversations…..bless you for raising a son who would be drawn to the peace corps and to africa. and who trusts his mama to pick his law school. now, that is some sorta gold medal of honor…….
They go…they come back…they go again. Presently I have the youngest leaving in the fall and the two oldest have moved back home, with no plans to go anywhere soon, economically speaking. I do have those moments of feeling a little nuts with a house of quasi-adults, yet I know they will all be gone (again) at some point and I will feel a bit sad and empty all over again, but it will feel easier too. The leave taking reminds me of losing those baby teeth. I see lots of this as a school nurse. That first tooth begins to wriggle and wiggle just a bit. It is exciting. The little ones fiddle with that first tooth with their tongues and their fingers. They want it out…they are scared that it WILL come out. Then they want it over and out and won’t I pull it for them? I explain that, even though it is “almost” out, it needs to happen a bit at a time and in its own time. That tooth loosens from the gum a bit and the gum heals. It loosens a little more, and the gum heals some more. Eventually the tooth is really ready to pop out and the gum is all healed and ready for the new tooth and that baby tooth usuallly just tumbles out with little fuss or blood. Watching my children move on and out was a bit like that tooth. They wriggled and wiggled a bit at time, pulling loose and becoming free and I got slowly used to the idea and healed. By the time they left, it hurt a bit, but we were all ready. And though there was an empty space…it has filled with a bigger adult tooth that looks quite wonderful.
oh, lord god, the power of the chair. have i not said a million times that the beauty here, the TRUE beauty and power and wisdom of the chair, is the collective. it is the power of the circle of chairs pulling in, leaning in close, and pouring out your heart, and your story, and your wisdom. i will carry that loose tooth metaphor as i journey on and on in this. a little tug, a little bleeding, time to heal. just the other day, as the farawayness was settling in, i started to think how at the start of the week i was sooo excited for young will, then a few days into it, as new york city seems to be the one calling his name most loudly, i started to imagine what it would be like, days and weeks on end, knowing he is there……and so yes, you are once again utterly brilliant in painting the psychodynamics so brilliantly. oh, lamcal i have missed you. i know everyone’s worlds are so busy, and i know coming to a silly old blog becomes a distant distraction, but i do love when the stalwarts come back for a visit and light the place up with their incandescence. blessed holy thursday, on this most magnificent day. i had you in my heart as i woke up extra early just to be out in my garden for the breaking of dawn and the birdsong that comes with it…….love you. xoxox