Progress report!
2.28.09
It just occurred to me that I started writing this blog in June, and the plan is for me to continue with it through the end of May — through Sean’s finals and his return home for the summer — and then some other first-year parent is supposed to take over come June, to chronicle his/her thoughts and feelings about his/her son’s or daughter’s experience going through SOAR and then on with the rest of it. (Any volunteers?)
And that means that I’m at the three-quarters mark: June through February is three-quarters of the way through my first-year parent’s academic year! Woo hoo! Blow the horn! Ring the bell! Shout it from the carillon tower: I’m still here to tell the tale!
So what have I learned? Where am I exactly, on this journey of mine? (And this is, after all, the All About Me Show.)
I’d have to say that my first quarter — June through August — was about the physical preparations of getting Sean ready: buying supplies, getting his bedroom cleaned out, taking care of administrative stuff, that kind of thing. Looking back, I was probably somewhat in denial that he was going to leave. I know I thought about the impending leaving — it gnawed at me from the back of my mind — but I think I also stupidly thought that the summer would last forever, and that the time would never come.
Well, it did. And so the second quarter — September through November — became about him leaving and me missing him. It was a day-to-day struggle to get over that lump in my throat and that tear in my eye that I’d get every single night as I’d step into his bedroom doorway and quietly say goodnight to my beloved son who wasn’t there. And who wasn’t ever going to be there again for any long-term period of time. It was over: my days of being his every-day parent were over. It didn’t mean that I didn’t care or didn’t worry or didn’t want to be part of his life, but I had to acknowledge that things were — had to be, whether I liked it or not — different from then on.
And this was the period that had given rise to the idea of this blog in the first place: I had observed mothers who had gone before me being in mourning, basically, from September into October and even into November of the years when their children went to college for the first time. It seemed that by Thanksgiving, they had become pretty independent and hip to their new lives, but then whammo! Thanksgiving break came, and they had all kinds of new feelings and situations to deal with.
In my case, the second quarter brought a breast-cancer diagnosis on top of missing Sean, so I was forced to turn a bit inward and deal with my own issues rather than fret so much about his. Maybe that was a bit of a blessing in disguise to have to shift my focus. It also presented the new challenge of what to tell him and when about my cancer process and prognosis.
And now the third quarter — December through February — has come and gone. During this period, I’ve put (I hope) the final punctuation mark on my cancer episode and have adjusted to Alex beginning a new position as the head of a company out of state — far out of state.
And, just recently, I’ve been “struggling” with a very good problem: having some free time. This is such a new state of being — one that I’ve longed for for as long as I can remember — that I hardly know what to do with myself now that it’s arrived (even if it’s only temporary for some reason). It’s manifesting itself in a kind of urgency to figure out what I want to be now that I’m all grown up. And I haven’t a clue — coincidentally, just like many college sophomores who are staring requirements in the face that they declare a major, but have no idea what to choose.
The difference between me and those sophomores (besides the obvious) is that I already have an established life: I have a husband, two children, a home, a dog, friends, an exercise habit, a part-time job on campus, a part-time home-based business, a church affiliation, and volunteer pursuits.
And lest you think that I’ve forgotten that I do have a second child to continue to nurture through the rest of her high school career and to help establish in a college experience of her own, I haven’t forgotten that. It’s just that she’s more the “typical” teenager than Sean was in one sense — he was something of a home body (and I loved having him around — don’t get me wrong), while she’s gone a lot with her friends and activities, to the point where it’s kind of like she doesn’t live here sometimes. She’s just about to embark on driver’s ed, too, so when she can drive on her own eventually, that will further clinch my new almost-empty-nester lifestyle.
So I suppose the hallmarks of this third quarter have been a focus on me and figuring out what to do next.
What will the fourth and final quarter of Sean’s first year in college bring? Of course, I have no idea! That’s why I’ve called this blog “Never Been There, Never Done That”: even though Alex and I are UW grads ourselves, we’ve never been the parents of a UW student. This state of not knowing has been the beauty of this blog for me: even I, as its author, have no idea what’s going to happen next. I just call ’em like I see ’em as the balls going whizzing by.
What I do know — or think, anyway — is that Alex’s out-of-state travel will end at some point, and at some other point, you’d think that we’d sell this too-large house and move into something much smaller. Those two events will provide more transitions.
All I can say is, it’s been quite a ride so far, and I appreciate having this blog to write. I could have written all of this stuff down in a journal, but somehow knowing that I’m sharing it with readers (even if there are only three of you out there!) makes it all the more cathartic for me.
The main thing that I want to convey is that we’re all in this together. We all miss our kids; we’re all dealing with having them gone; and we’re all, in our own ways, navigating how to craft the new, fulfilling lives that will come next.
And that means that I’m at the three-quarters mark: June through February is three-quarters of the way through my first-year parent’s academic year! Woo hoo! Blow the horn! Ring the bell! Shout it from the carillon tower: I’m still here to tell the tale!
So what have I learned? Where am I exactly, on this journey of mine? (And this is, after all, the All About Me Show.)
I’d have to say that my first quarter — June through August — was about the physical preparations of getting Sean ready: buying supplies, getting his bedroom cleaned out, taking care of administrative stuff, that kind of thing. Looking back, I was probably somewhat in denial that he was going to leave. I know I thought about the impending leaving — it gnawed at me from the back of my mind — but I think I also stupidly thought that the summer would last forever, and that the time would never come.
Well, it did. And so the second quarter — September through November — became about him leaving and me missing him. It was a day-to-day struggle to get over that lump in my throat and that tear in my eye that I’d get every single night as I’d step into his bedroom doorway and quietly say goodnight to my beloved son who wasn’t there. And who wasn’t ever going to be there again for any long-term period of time. It was over: my days of being his every-day parent were over. It didn’t mean that I didn’t care or didn’t worry or didn’t want to be part of his life, but I had to acknowledge that things were — had to be, whether I liked it or not — different from then on.
And this was the period that had given rise to the idea of this blog in the first place: I had observed mothers who had gone before me being in mourning, basically, from September into October and even into November of the years when their children went to college for the first time. It seemed that by Thanksgiving, they had become pretty independent and hip to their new lives, but then whammo! Thanksgiving break came, and they had all kinds of new feelings and situations to deal with.
In my case, the second quarter brought a breast-cancer diagnosis on top of missing Sean, so I was forced to turn a bit inward and deal with my own issues rather than fret so much about his. Maybe that was a bit of a blessing in disguise to have to shift my focus. It also presented the new challenge of what to tell him and when about my cancer process and prognosis.
And now the third quarter — December through February — has come and gone. During this period, I’ve put (I hope) the final punctuation mark on my cancer episode and have adjusted to Alex beginning a new position as the head of a company out of state — far out of state.
And, just recently, I’ve been “struggling” with a very good problem: having some free time. This is such a new state of being — one that I’ve longed for for as long as I can remember — that I hardly know what to do with myself now that it’s arrived (even if it’s only temporary for some reason). It’s manifesting itself in a kind of urgency to figure out what I want to be now that I’m all grown up. And I haven’t a clue — coincidentally, just like many college sophomores who are staring requirements in the face that they declare a major, but have no idea what to choose.
The difference between me and those sophomores (besides the obvious) is that I already have an established life: I have a husband, two children, a home, a dog, friends, an exercise habit, a part-time job on campus, a part-time home-based business, a church affiliation, and volunteer pursuits.
And lest you think that I’ve forgotten that I do have a second child to continue to nurture through the rest of her high school career and to help establish in a college experience of her own, I haven’t forgotten that. It’s just that she’s more the “typical” teenager than Sean was in one sense — he was something of a home body (and I loved having him around — don’t get me wrong), while she’s gone a lot with her friends and activities, to the point where it’s kind of like she doesn’t live here sometimes. She’s just about to embark on driver’s ed, too, so when she can drive on her own eventually, that will further clinch my new almost-empty-nester lifestyle.
So I suppose the hallmarks of this third quarter have been a focus on me and figuring out what to do next.
What will the fourth and final quarter of Sean’s first year in college bring? Of course, I have no idea! That’s why I’ve called this blog “Never Been There, Never Done That”: even though Alex and I are UW grads ourselves, we’ve never been the parents of a UW student. This state of not knowing has been the beauty of this blog for me: even I, as its author, have no idea what’s going to happen next. I just call ’em like I see ’em as the balls going whizzing by.
What I do know — or think, anyway — is that Alex’s out-of-state travel will end at some point, and at some other point, you’d think that we’d sell this too-large house and move into something much smaller. Those two events will provide more transitions.
All I can say is, it’s been quite a ride so far, and I appreciate having this blog to write. I could have written all of this stuff down in a journal, but somehow knowing that I’m sharing it with readers (even if there are only three of you out there!) makes it all the more cathartic for me.
The main thing that I want to convey is that we’re all in this together. We all miss our kids; we’re all dealing with having them gone; and we’re all, in our own ways, navigating how to craft the new, fulfilling lives that will come next.
