Fear Not .. Feel Lot

I believe I am like almost all Moms, I assume all parents or caretakers but speaking as a mother here, faced with the incredibly fast approaching moment when you first child goes to college.  

It is bittersweet, a little bewildering and a lot of conflicting put on the brakes vs helping them fly and soar emotions. I look back at moments, at pictures, of his first day of pre-K, shy smile, top of his head somewhere around my mid-thigh and a backpack significantly bigger than he.  I pick up the photo of my small bundle, loads of blue black hair, swaddled (ok he wasn’t swaddled as somehow I never mastered that technique) in my arms as we first brought him home.  I remember leaving the hospital and wondering what the hell was wrong with the people in there, they had gone to years of college, did they not see that my husband and I were so not qualified to take care of the small boy I had just give birth to?  I mean I struggled with nursing him, I was afraid to “break” him putting on the outfit we had bought for the occasion.  The outfit that friends with children had decidedly told us NOT to get, get something that pulls over him, but not me.  I was ambitious before his birth, it had to be cute.  The outfit was cute with buttons that annoyed the crap out of me as I fumbled to close them. They saw this, the staff with experience and education and yet they let us take him home… no manual.

That sentiment of being slightly perplexed and wondering what to do, if it was being done right, when I knew I was blowing it in the moment persisted and still does.  Did I push too hard at times, not enough at others?  I swore I taught him better table manners or was I more concerned with making sure we had dinner as a family, at the table, even though I was a Mom who worked outside the home and commuted, every night?  When did I go from mashing him sweet potatoes to making him separate meals, just so meals would be about our time together not a fight to force him to eat something he did not want? 

Every first is etched in my mind, probably more than his even, and as we are here at the end of his local grade school education I am just as nervous and excited as that day I took him home.  He has been lucky to be in a school district that excels and yet is imperfect.  It is diverse not just ethnically but economically, he and his brother aware that some kids drive an Audi to high school and others qualify for free lunch, and that neither of those things makes you a better or worse person.  He has grown from this to be an empathetic, curious and openly accepting person.  He has learned a lot, been exposed to a good solid foundational curriculum and loads of arts too.  

As we prepped this year, he and I, I have taken the college application experience with more calm that I think I had when I was trying to find a daycare.  College is a great experience, I have no affinity to compete to get into any name brand college and neither did my son.  All colleges have pluses and minuses, so why have we let our society get sucked into the greed driven game of overpaying for prep and attendance to so many schools?  Shouldn’t college be the experience that any child should shoot for if that is their calling? It is not everyone’s goal and that is amazing, those kids who choose other paths will be adults who succeed in their passions as can the kids who go to college - viva la difference. 

My son - he was pretty impressive, bias of course, in how he did almost all his college applications on his own with his guidance counselor, ok my credit card (which was my pet peeve and still aggravates me - why do we pay to apply?  The employees who process those applications can easily be funded by the colleges’ over inflated tuition.  Pissed me off when I was in high school too) and my gentle (yeah they were not alway gentle) reminders of due dates.  He knew what he wanted, it was so fun to tour places with him.  It gave us time in the car to laugh, to talk, to listen to endless hours of his music (my ability to keep a poker face during many rap lyrics is Oscar worthy, my inability to not comment that women do not like to be called hos and bitches met with his Oscar worthy eye rolls) with a bits of him adding songs that I would choose and being on campuses seeing young people in one what one would hope would be temples of learning, debate and discourse.  

Am I ready ? HELL NO but at the same time HELL YES.  I fear not, I am so nervous and afraid for him, is he is ready? He is ready. I feel so many emotions and I am going to be a hot mess at graduation and an even hotter mess at drop off.  It is another moment that will become a fond memory but for now it is a moment that requires me to hope that while I left the hospital with him, without a manual I helped him write his story to this point in a way that will let him be the best person he can be and continue to write his story his way. 

Good luck class of 2022 .. may you all be the best selves, teach us older people how to dream and may you find your happy in whatever you do.