David Goes To College

Two years ago I began sharing my life every week with all of you on the eve of my older son’s departure for college. It only seems fitting that I end this journey on the eve of my younger son’s departure for the same. I have once again begun a summer of buying sheets for twin beds, desktop lamps, little bitty refrigerators, and laundry bags for dirty clothes that will hopefully bring him home to be washed.

Now I face my second little boy leaving my nice, safe nest. The little one that followed big brother around the house and back yard from the time he took his first steps. That same one that hid behind the couch while watching Jurassic Park just one more time. The one with the skinny little three year old shoulders that wriggled at me to scratch his back just a little while more. And the one whose pitiful calls echoed in a big empty house when big brother started his first year of school. "Charrrrr-leeeee! Where are you???"

He has grown tall and strong and smart, and I am so proud of the man he has become. As I watched another round of blue robed, young people walk across the stage for Airline High, I cried in the stands remembering the sweet little people they had once been. I heard echoes of soccer games, and tee ball, and field days gone by. I smelled remnants of popcorn I had popped and candy I had sold while all those young children jostled and pushed to get first in line every Friday. I remembered field trips of herding kids around the Fair, and hours of sitting through lessons while he made his first attempts at being part of a band.

Now he is heading way down south and it seems so far away. I began once again losing sleep fretting how he would adjust to a new place and new life. Late at night I woke up worrying about him playing hockey so far away. What if he got hurt? My older boy had gotten hurt once during Rugby and I had to rush to his side. But Ruston was much closer than Lafayette. Could they take care of him until I got there?

The next morning I called the school and asked if they had a doctor on campus in case he got hurt or maybe came down with the flu. The kind freshmen counselor assured me they had a clinic on campus and they would take care of him just fine. Then that night I worried that maybe a clinic wouldn’t be enough. Suppose he got hit by a speeding puck or misplaced skate? Lafayette was swampy and had alligators on campus and probably had mosquitoes biting worse than we ever even imagined up here. Suppose he got West Nile Virus or Malaria or Swine Flu, or suppose he tripped and fell down?

The next morning after another call, the ever patient freshmen counselor assured me that Lafayette was well equipped for anything that may happen. She said they had doctors and hospitals just like every place else, and they had not yet lost a student to a wild alligator running rampage on campus. She assured me he was a fine young man that I had raised to be smart and strong, and he would handle anything that came his way with the confidence and skills he had gained from the home I had given.

But this did nothing to stop my tossing at night. And as I lie in the dark, quiet house and think of my little boy turning into a man, I wonder. Would I do it all again? Would I spend hundreds of hours chasing little people around Chuck E Cheese, and spend thousands of dollars eating only Happy Meals every time we went out? Would I spend years again going only to G rated movies, and end every evening falling asleep in a chair with Harry Potter on my lap? Would I lose months of sleep tending sick little boys and go through 13 more years of getting up before first light? Would I spend years once again reading Mercer Mayer and have the TV forever tuned to Nick? Would I spend hours waiting outside of hockey practice, and spend eternities next to a bed waiting for a temperature to drop? Would that mean I would go through eons of holding little sticky hands as I crossed streets, and get food stained kisses whenever I walked outside?

Would I lose that much more sleep? Would I do it all over again? Oh, yes. Without a doubt. In a heartbeat.