The Drop Off

And just like that, after 17 years, my daughter is off and away at college. It seems strange how “just like that” can account for 17 years.

Seventeen years of raising one of the two most important people in my life on this little blue planet. You try desperately to figure out how the hell all this time went by. So much is lost and forgotten. Pangs of midlife memory failure cause anxiety. Then you go back and look at pictures and remember, or as they now say, recreate the past.

The little girl who sang with me in her car seat as we drove back and forth from my parents’ house. All the small transitions and big moments that the kids forget but were made for you. All these amazing little gifts that come with raising your own kids.

The days were often long, filled with a frantic rush to get through them and finally relax watching TV. I’m not saying I want them back, but I could use them once in a while on a slow weekend. I could use a good dose of Sesame Street and a bowl of cereal. Some Elmo and Abby Cadabby floating around the screen.

It all seems surreal, and I feel so many things all the time, swirling around my head.

There are different feelings you have as a dad versus a mom. My job is to pack the car tightly, making sure all the necessary, and completely unnecessary, things make it to the dorm room. We had to take two cars, and for me that is never a problem.

James, my son and little best friend, rides with me. Olivia, Mom, and Aunt Mandy are in car two.

I stay busy with dad’s work, the Tetris car packing and lifting the heavier objects into the car. What a difference from when I was a kid. There are no TVs, no heavy-ass CRT monitors, stereo systems, or heavy tower computers.

Just lots of extra clothes and outfits that may work one day if the moon is just right.

Also, cleaning supplies?

I never brought or had one cleaning supply of any kind in my dorm room. It made me laugh to think about how different girls and boys can be.

My wife deserves all her flowers because she has been planning, buying, and figuring out everything Olivia would need for months. She has quietly, and sometimes not so quietly, felt the weight of this transition more than anyone. Through all of it, she has been absolutely amazing and continues to be the best wife and mother anyone could hope for.

People would ask me if I was going to miss her, if I was sad, or how I felt about the transition.

I do miss her dearly.

She was always in her room doing her own thing, but there was proximity, and that was enough. I could periodically go to her door and knock, of course, check in, and see what she was doing. She would be pretending to read or do work while quickly hiding her phone as she texted her friends.

She is still so very much my little girl, who has been sheltered at home and away from so many of life’s storms. There is this constant tension between keeping them safe and allowing them to grow up without a care, and then one day dropping them off in a strange new world.

The day went smoothly. We got her all set up and ready to conquer the next chapter of her life, and then just like that, you are off and back home.

The transition has been difficult, and she misses us dearly. It is such a large adjustment, with so many changes all at once. Today my wife is going back up to the school. It’s hard to be surrounded by so many people and still feel all alone. I remember different times when I first went away to school and felt that way, especially when the friends I had made went back home on the weekends to work.

A new room with a roommate, new people, new routines, new expectations. The fear of the unknown. No familiar bedroom down the hall. No kitchen to wander into. No little check-ins throughout the day. All the things that seemed so ordinary suddenly become the things you miss the most.

It is good that we are all so close and that we communicate. I know she will navigate this transition with the same grace she has shown in everything else in her life. It may take some time, and that is okay. There is no rule that says you have to feel at home the moment you arrive somewhere new.

So more than missing her, I am optimistically happy, grateful, and excited for her. For all the new things she will experience, the people she has not met yet, the friendships that will become lifelong, the mistakes she will make and learn from, and the confidence that will come from figuring things out without us standing right beside her.

I know she will come home different. Not unrecognizable and not less ours, just a little more herself. Maybe that is the hardest and best part of raising kids. You spend all those years building a home around them, keeping them safe, feeding them, driving them everywhere, worrying about them, laughing with them, getting annoyed with them, and loving them more than you knew was possible.

And then one day, if you did your job right, they leave. You pack the car, carry the boxes, make the bed, give the hugs, and walk back to the car.

Somehow 17 years fits inside that one drive home.

I miss her, but more than that, I am proud of her. I cannot wait to see who comes walking back through our door.