<p>I like these threads because it helps me know that others feel like me… we know this is the right path, but we are sad. I had a hard time holding back tears with son next to me in church today since he will soon be 2000 miles away. I was relieved when I could head to the summer picnic outside where I could put on sunglasses.</p>
<p>Vinceh, that is a really good point. As much as I love things like texting, facebook, etc., at times I also hate it. Too much, too much, too much! Sometimes just want to turn things “off”.</p>
<p>megmno -I don’t think it’s a boy or girl thing to be organized.My D is messy and last minute ,and was throwing things together for school,not neatly like you would think .2 of my boys are neat,one is sort of neat .My big mistake was a series of nannies when they were little,who cleaned up for them, instead of teaching them to pick up their own clothes!!</p>
<p>D left yesterday on the plane for her junior year. I really, really miss her, but I don’t feel the heartache I had in her freshman hear. It’s more like I miss my best friend. What helps is seeing how much she has matured in the last two years. She’s so capable now. Not that there haven’t been bumps along the way (and more to come). What’s nice is that as your kids grow up, they become better company! When you’re together, it’s by choice. And they’re so appreciative.</p>
<p>Here’s a laugh for all you parents of freshman. Yesterday, we dropped off D for her Soph year. It was also freshman move-in day. My very worldly S who we later dropped off for his senior year just shook his head at all the freshman, saying, “So young, they’re all so young…”</p>
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If this was my kid, he would have been taking the dirty clothes with him, and figuring out the laundry system at school in a hurry. 
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<p>Although, now that I think about it, he refused to take more than 2 pairs of jeans with him. “I don’t need a fresh pair pf pants every day, as long as I haven’t spilled anything on them I can wear them again.” Smile and nod, smile and nod. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Oh, big hugs to all of you who are going through this for the first (or last) time! Allow yourself a good luxurious cry as soon as possible, and keep coming back to CC, where we know what you’re going through.</p>
<p>martina: We also had to display the cats during our weekly Skype with D. We got many a laugh out of it, because it greatly confused one of them. She seemed to recognize D’s voice and would go hunting around the desk. D got some hilarious screen captures on her end of the cat sniffing our camera lens.</p>
<p>I missed DD much more this time than last year. We spent the whole weekend together; watched a movie had lunches yesterday and today in our fav. restaurants and talked for ever. DD and I watch lots of TV Shows together. Our present fav. are “The Big Bang Theory”, and “How I met your mother”.
I’m off to a business trip to Asia and DW will accompany me. Maybe the idea of being so far from DD is making me a bit more nervous this time.
Wish all the parent out there well and all the students good luck. There is a limit to what we can do as a parent.</p>
<p>DD officially broke up yesterday with her BF whom she had seen all of senior year in HS. They more or less mutually decided a long distance relationship (she is headed for gap year in Israel a week from tonight) was not for them. </p>
<p>on the ride back from their parting </p>
<p>DW - “are you alright?”
DD - “no, I am not alright. And there is nothing you can do about it. I realize that, as parents, that must really suck” </p>
<p>I am sad for her, and totally in awe at her emotional maturity. And dreading her departure. And anxious about the packing process. And trying to focus at work.</p>
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</p>
<p>I’m not sitting in judgment of two young people that mutually decide to move on rather than deal with a long-range relationship. But waiting basically to the last moment to do so seems pretty immature to me.</p>
<p>^^really?</p>
<p>First, I think the emotional maturity was the ability to separate herself from her own pain to understand how it must be for her parent.</p>
<p>Second, I understand their choice to wait. Our son and his HS girlfriend did the same. They decided that they wouldn’t do the long-distance thing, but since they still cared for and enjoyed each other, they saw no reason to split any sooner than necessary. How is that immature?</p>
<p>“First, I think the emotional maturity was the ability to separate herself from her own pain to understand how it must be for her parent.”</p>
<p>yes, that was precisely what I meant.</p>
<p>We spent our last hour at home waiting for the DC rush hour to end. We could have left at anytime, but reckoned it’s more comfortable to sit still in the family room rather than on the Beltway. </p>
<p>While sitting around twiddling our thumbs, Son and I had the following conversation:
Me: I ironed all your “nice” shirts last night and put them on hangers on the guest bed. Now they’re gone.<br>
Son: Yeah. I folded them and put them in my duffle.
Me: [[blink]] :eek: :mad:
Son: Wha?? 
Me: Oh, nevermind. :rolleyes:</p>
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</p>
<p>That scenario is not as Brooklynborndad related. In you son’s situation, they’ve already decided not to do the long-distance thing and are merely hanging around as friends as the commitment to each other had severed. That’s fine.</p>
<p>“That scenario is not as Brooklynborndad related”</p>
<p>i really only even repeated the scenario as background to DD’s very insightful take on a parent’s reaction. </p>
<p>Its been a long time since I was 18, and I was never in quite that situation. I certainly didnt mean to judge that situation one way or the other, and I really do not see how someone who only has what I posted as info, could do so either. </p>
<p>I was impressed by her ability to step outside herself and see what the inability to help felt like from a parent’s POV, without her ever having been a parent. This from a child whose EQ at one time presented reasons for concern.</p>
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</p>
<p>Well, I’ve never broke up with someone via a text message (like my son’s friend received) yet I have a decided opinion about it … so yeah, it’s quite easy to judge things you don’t have specific experience with.</p>
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</p>
<p>Maybe she has seen a Gilmore Girls episode or two. You know, where Rory has a problem with a guy and Lorelai tries to help her through the situation only to fail and forget that lesson and tries to help her in the next episode only to fail and then they eat ice cream late at night while the music goes ‘la, la, la, la.’ Wait, I didn’t narrow the episode list down too much … my bad. 
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</p>
<p>I’m glad she is making progress and I wish her the best.</p>
<p>"Its been a long time since I was 18, and I was never in quite that situation. I certainly didnt mean to judge that situation one way or the other, and I really do not see how someone who only has what I posted as info, could do so either. </p>
<p>Well, I’ve never broke up with someone via a text message (like my son’s friend received) yet I have a decided opinion about it … so yeah, it’s quite easy to judge things you don’t have specific experience with."</p>
<p>In this case I dont have experience, but at least have knowledge of the context. You do not have enough knowledge of the context to even judge IF you have experience with the exact situation. I think if you have any high EQ, you will see the inappropriateness of continuing to discuss it.</p>
<p>"Maybe she has seen a Gilmore Girls episode or two. "</p>
<p>I very much doubt that.</p>
<p>In four days, DW and I will steer a fully loaded car onto northbound 95 as D1 prepares to begin a new life. (There will not be enough room for D1 so she and D2 will board the train.) I spent some time thinking about gifts to leave in D1’s room. Money? Gift cards? Then I remember how much D1 enjoyed having me read poems to her when she was going to bed so I decide to grab a pen and write a copy of her favorite poem. </p>
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</p>
<p>As I continue to write, the memories come streaming in. I can see her large brown eyes looking up in rapt attention, the blond hair, and the smile—always the smile. A small tear runs down my cheek. I soldier on.<br>
</p>
<p>Soon DW comes downstairs. “What’s wrong,” she asks with alarm. I just point to the poem and tell her I need a hug. </p>
<p>When D1 finds the poem under her pillow at her new home she will not be particularly moved. But she will acknowledge how much the memories mean to me, and that is all I can ask.</p>
<p>lovely, coase</p>
<p>I was the sun, the kids were my planets by Beverly Beckham
(<a href=“http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/08/27/i_was_the_sun_the_kids_were_my_planets/[/url]”>http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/08/27/i_was_the_sun_the_kids_were_my_planets/</a>)
•<br>
I wasn’t wrong about their leaving. My husband kept telling me I was. That it wasn’t the end of the world when first one child, then another , and then the last packed their bags and left for college.</p>
<p>But it was the end of something. <code>Can you pick me up, Mom?“</code>What’s for dinner?” <code>What do you think?"
I was the sun and they were the planets. And there was life on those planets, whirling, non stop plans and parties and friends coming and going, and ideas and dreams and the phone ringing and doors slamming.
And I got to beam down on them. To watch. To glow.
And then they were gone, one after the other.
</code>They’ll be back," my husband said. And he was right. They came back. But he was wrong, too, because they came back for intervals – not for always, not planets anymore, making their predictable orbits, but unpredictable, like shooting stars.
Always is what you miss. Always knowing where they are. At school. At play practice. At a ballgame. At a friend’s. Always looking at the clock mid day and anticipating the door opening, the sigh, the smile, the laugh, the shrug. <code>How was school?" answered for years in too much detail.</code>And then he said . . . and then I said to him. . . ." Then hardly answered at all.
Always, knowing his friends.
Her favorite show.
What he had for breakfast.
What she wore to school.
What he thinks.
How she feels.
My friend Beth’s twin girls left for Roger Williams yesterday. They are her fourth and fifth children. She’s been down this road three times before. You’d think it would get easier.
<code>I don’t know what I’m going to do without them," she has said every day for months.
And I have said nothing, because, really, what is there to say?
A chapter ends. Another chapter begins. One door closes and another door opens. The best thing a parent can give their child is wings. I read all these things when my children left home and thought then what I think now: What do these words mean?
Eighteen years isn’t a chapter in anyone’s life. It’s a whole book, and that book is ending and what comes next is connected to, but different from, everything that has gone before.
Before was an infant, a toddler, a child, a teenager. Before was feeding and changing and teaching and comforting and guiding and disciplining, everything hands -on. Now?
Now the kids are young adults and on their own and the parents are on the periphery, and it’s not just a chapter change. It’s a sea change.
As for a door closing? Would that you could close a door and forget for even a minute your children and your love for them and your fear for them, too. And would that they occupied just a single room in your head. But they’re in every room in your head and in your heart.
As for the wings analogy? It’s sweet. But children are not birds. Parents don’t let them go and build another nest and have all new offspring next year.
Saying goodbye to your children and their childhood is much harder than all the pithy sayings make it seem. Because that’s what going to college is. It’s goodbye.
It’s not a death. And it’s not a tragedy.
But it’s not nothing, either.
To grow a child, a body changes. It needs more sleep. It rejects food it used to like. It expands and it adapts.
To let go of a child, a body changes, too. It sighs and it cries and it feels weightless and heavy at the same time.
The drive home alone without them is the worst. And the first few days. But then it gets better. The kids call, come home, bring their friends, fill the house with their energy again.
Life does go on.
</code>Can you give me a ride to the mall?" ``Mom, make him stop!" I don’t miss this part of parenting, playing chauffeur and referee. But I miss them, still, all these years later, the children they were, at the dinner table, beside me on the couch, talking on the phone, sleeping in their rooms, safe, home, mine.</p>