The Drop Off

The day my parents brought me to college there were tears, and not just my mom's.  Although I was excited about the new phase of life college promised, I really liked high school. And only in momentary flashes was I dying to get out of my parents' house, so all the promising collegiate allure of total freedom wasn't overly compelling.

It was a really hot day in mid-August, and East Coasters, let me tell you that Iowa has humidity that puts even swampy DC to shame.  I was lucky enough to be in an air-conditioned dorm, which was a gift to us all, but especially my dad who assembled the requisite freshman loft bed for my room and moved my futon in to tuck beneath it.

After all the hard work of assembling precariously designed furniture and moving in giant posters of French women on bicycles with baguettes was done, my fam headed into downtown Iowa City to get some food.  As we sat in the local Brueggers Bagels eating our sandwiches, I was suddenly overwhelmed by what was happening.  I ran to the bathroom, locked myself in and only somewhat successfully choked back sobs.  I kept on thinking about how this leaving me here all alone thing was happening way too fast.  (I am also the person who as a teenager was at a doctor's appointment by myself and when the nurse tried to give me a tetanus shot panicked because she was coming at me way too fast and ran out of the room.)  Some things in life need to eased into!

I'm not sure what the drive back home was like for my parents, and as that 18 year old, it didn't occur to me to ask them.  I can guess that it was a slightly salt-tinged mixture of pride, sadness, hope and fear.  I feel like I know this in part because it is so much of what I feel on the days I drop Mateo off in the morning at his school and his tears and calls for "mama" fill the car.  He was ridiculously brave (nonchalant?) the first week of starting his program, but soon he figured out that it was not a novelty, but the new normal, and there have been some really tough goodbyes for both of us.

Why did I make the connection between these two events?  The damn Brueggers Bagels in West Hartford Center that I pass every morning on the way to drop Mateo off.

Sob.