Same old same old. Well, I'm the same, but older, and the kids are different, but the same.
Seven years after my oldest child was a college freshman, I again find myself visiting campus, meeting a new crop of eighteen year olds. Each one reminds me of someone I had met years ago -- the kid everyone on the floor loves, the one everyone loves to hate, the few you just know you'll see in cap and gown less than four years from now and feel as if you've known them forever and wonder why time goes so fast.
As I lay practically comatose on my daughter's dorm bed, my body contorted unnaturally around the various items of her daily life that seem to occupy permanent spots on top of her rumpled comforter, I gave up on trying to hoist myself up to greet the seemingly endless stream of visitors. At one point, alone in the room, I was momentarily embarrassed when a boy pushed the door open without knocking. Unnecessarily, no doubt, I peered up at him and explained I was not one of the girls who lived there. When he introduced himself, I apologized for not getting up to shake his hand. He didn't seem at all offended. I suppose you can't expect social grace when you're the one who didn't knock.
The quad outside the dorm was swarming with baby faced boys (I wasn't fooled by the facial hair) playing volleyball and football or just simply on the move, filled with energy and burgers and hot dogs and clearly unaware of the paunches in their future. Unaware that one day the hair on their backs will be thicker than the hair on their heads. They don't know yet about nose hair clippers; they are light years away from proctology jokes.
I had convinced myself I was down in New Orleans a mere four weeks after school had started because my daughter was homesick. Apparently she thinks I was down in New Orleans because I was, well, "child sick." It's not that she wasn't glad to see me -- I did, after all, come armed with a credit card and a dozen Chicago bagels. Not New York bagels, but still a treat in the culinary wasteland of jambalaya and po boys. She's been away before, for even longer than four weeks, but freshman year in college is different. A more official sort of parting, the kind from which there can be no real return. And, as she pointed out, it had been just the two of us for five years. You get kind of attached.
I've been down this road before. Twice. It's the same but different. Six and seven years ago there were still birds left in my nest. There was always somebody else around and I thought it was good to give the college kids their space, to really let them leave. Not that they ever really did, completely. Six and seven years ago it was Facebook that kept the kids tied to their old friends from home and maybe slower to connect with the new friends down the hall. Now it's instagrams and snap chats and selfies. The phones have gotten smaller and now they're getting bigger again, but there's no stopping the trend toward staying in touch, always being somewhere outside the moment and place you're in. Maybe it's like love though; maybe there's enough connectedness to go around.
After dinner with my daughter and her roommate last night, I headed back to my hotel, sad to leave them but happy to wind down the day, alone. They headed back to the dorm, excited to get ready for a frat party. The night was young, and they would be spending it surrounded by friends they've just met and, at the same time, constantly in touch with friends they've recently left behind. Two girls boarded my street car, and they seemed disappointed that there weren't two seats together. Diagonally across the aisle from each other, both tapped away at their cell phones the entire time. When we pulled up to their stop, though, they took off, still tapping away but giggling together about something. Maybe it is possible to be two places at once.
It's Sunday morning, and it will be hours before I meet my daughter for breakfast. For me, it's the same routine, different Starbucks. I can barely remember the Starbucks on M Street in D.C., and am already feeling quite at home at the one on Magazine Street. The people are different but the same. Students, young families, twenty-somethings just back from a run. I'm the same but older.
I am looking forward to spending another day with my daughter, but content with my time alone. Well, alone except for the occasional text with folks far away. Same old, same new.
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