Letting go

<I wrote this last year, when I took Sander to college. I think it’s a nice piece of writing, so I’m posting it here to save it.>

I keep thinking about the first time I dropped off a boy I loved at a dorm.

We were both 18, and he was off to a college in upstate New York, and I was mired in messes at home with my mother and sisters and muddling through.

I was desperate for the freedom he had to just go, for the astonishing lightness of having no one tugging him back as he moved forward, no one to take care of but himself.

He carried it lightly, having always lived with this abundance, the unexamined assumption that everyone could pay for a private college and a dorm and books, that he would have no obligations or responsibilities beyond learning, meeting new people, and figuring out how to make the world a better place.

On the four-hour drive from where we lived in Connecticut to his new college in Clinton, New York, I blazed with anger and envy and grief, and fierce joy for this flash of time together, where he was all mine.

I was obsessed with this glorious boy, and that's all I could see -- that he was going forward to a real life, where he had a chance to become who he was supposed to be, and that I would be left behind, stuck at the commuter college for another year, waiting tables and taking a few classes when I could afford it.

I was driving him to school because he had displeased his mother, again, and she wanted nothing to do with him, again, and I was eager to prove my worth to him, to spend more time with him, to connect, even though we both knew he didn't love me the way that I loved him.

He did love me, though, and thought I was smart, funny, and an excellent friend -- he adored me.

Just not in the way that I needed him to.

I refused to see that he was right, that my messy family and complicated life would never be a good fit for a gloriously handsome, wealthy Connecticut boy whose father has a Wikipedia page.

Not that we had Wikipedia then, or even a computer.

We laughed a lot on the drive up, and talked about expectations, desires, and dreams, how we'd always be connected.

And too soon, we were there.

He'd been to boarding school for the last two years, after displeasing his mother, so he knew what to bring.

He had a suitcase full of button-down shirts and khaki shorts -- the Connecticut uniform -- and a parka, a hat, a couple of posters, and his guitar.

He found his dorm room, and we borrowed tape from his roommate, a New York City kid with long blonde hair and a goatee, and I helped put Jimi Hendrix and a jazz artist up on the wall.

And that was it for unpacking.

He looked at me, with his full attention, and I looked into his eyes and wished I were going to college too, and that I could stay, and he said, "Thank you. For driving, for helping me with this, for everything. I was really nervous, but you made it easier. I'm glad you were here."

I wrote down the number for the pay phone down the hall for his room, and he said I should call him once in a while.

He said whoever answered the phone would go get him if he was in his room.

I knew he'd forget to call.

It was almost time for me to drive home, so we sat on a sofa in the lounge, and he took out his guitar and began to sing a James Taylor song, and doors opened up and down the hall as girls appeared to sit at his feet and watch him play.

That was the last time I had his attention.

There have been so many other hard goodbyes since then, and other longings and griefs and partings.

Three years later I did make it to a dorm, older than the other students, grateful for the chance to be there, a bit resentful that it was a state school in a big city in a building made of cinder block.

But because my mother was in jail, I had no responsibilities and no one to take care of but myself and it was just as wonderful as I'd hoped.

And in four days I'll take a very different 19-year-old man to school under very different circumstances, except this young man will have a mother with him to help him get his bearings, instead of a heartsick, lonely teenaged girl.

And I'm overwhelmed by the idea that I can give my son this gift of time to grow on his own and to have nothing to do except figure out how to make the world a better place.

And I'm so glad that he's going at a time when there are more ways to connect than a pay phone down the hall from his room.

It's a pity he doesn't know how to play guitar.