Tuesday, May 1, 2018

Leaving the Big Easy

The college visits are winding down.

Officially, I'm down in New Orleans for Jazz Fest. Why else would I be here only two weeks before graduation weekend. It's not that I'm not looking forward to a humid graduation ceremony with thousands of strangers at the Superdome -- I am, I really am -- but this is my last chance to visit my daughter, here, where she seems so at home and I still can't help but think she only just arrived a minute ago.

Nostalgia can really mess with your head, so much so I was even sad when I Venmo'd her landlord the final rent payment this morning. I took little comfort in the imminent windfall of June 1st, when I will not only not have to pay her rent but will (hopefully) get the security deposit back. Found riches. At what cost though.

She has enjoyed her time here, at school in New Orleans. As she should. She senses that reality might not be quite as much fun. As she should. Though I am sure she will enjoy it more than she thinks she will. The hardest part for me, I remember, was those first early winter days, when I would come out of a large office building at five o'clock to find that I had completely missed daylight. There were other hard parts, but somehow that was the most jarring.

My other children have found their way past that initial shock that comes with the reality of non-academic life. They still navigate, as we all do, but they've become accustomed to the drudgery of adult life, to days when the sun just doesn't wait for you to be done. They have discovered, along the way, as I hope their sister will, that the drudgery isn't as bad as it's cracked up to be. It's not college, but who, really, could survive a lifetime of that? Well, maybe we all could.

I am sitting in a very new bar in my very new hotel, waiting for my daughter to join me so we can figure out where to eat dinner. There is never anything that resembles drudgery in New Orleans when you are figuring out where to eat dinner. So many choices, so little time. She feels rushed now, determined to squeeze in all the local sites and sounds and smells and flavors that she has taken for granted. She had no idea that four years could pass in a minute. I didn't have the heart to tell her.

We will go to Jazz Fest, because we never have. It will become just another thread in my nostalgic blanket, along with all the food and the parades and the people and the indefinable quirkiness that is New Orleans. Along with all my other college visits, so long ago (ten minutes, I think), all the milestones and all the setbacks in the journeys of three children, finding their way.

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