AJC > Sandy Springs > Blog > Archives > 2005 > September > 12
Monday, September 12, 2005
When a son goes off to college
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
My heart hurt.
Two weeks ago I took my son Zach — lock, stock and I-Pod — to Indiana University. This didn’t exactly sneak up on me.
Before his junior year at Riverwood, our mailbox filled up with direct-mail pieces for colleges and universities. Before his senior year, we sat with his school counselor to see what courses he had taken and what he would need to be considered by the schools on his list.
Then came the visits. Georgia Tech was an early favorite, but fell by the wayside. Then he visited Vanderbilt, Duke and Wake Forest and eliminated the latter two.
I took him to my alma mater, Georgia Southern University, but it didn’t show well. The last two schools would be Indiana and Georgia.
He and I made the trip to Bloomington, Ind., last April and he all but moved into the dorm that day. With apologies to Uga, he decided not to even visit Georgia.
I guess I could say that I didn’t have much time to prepare for him to leave home, but that would be a lie. For most parents, the 18-year clock on the kid leaving starts the moment they’re born. One of the first things a new parent is asked is whether they have started a college fund.
Done properly, parenting is about getting them ready to step out into the world. And 18 years should be plenty of time to prepare. Heck, we got a man on the moon in less than a decade.
But there I was, standing in his dorm room three weeks ago as the afternoon shadows were creeping in. There were no more boxes to move, no more forgotten items to fetch from Target and I had a 10-hour drive ahead. All that was left was good-bye.
But how do you put 18 years of love and caring and concern into a few sentences? All summer I thought about what I wanted to say; how proud I was of the young man he had become, how I wished good things for this next chapter in his life, how ready I felt he was to move along.
I told him all those things, and that I loved him. Then I took the crucifix from around my neck and put it around his. I hugged him tight one last time. And then my heart started to ache.
Our children belong to us, but they don’t.
