Northern comfort
1.13.09
Sean has been a great help to me — especially in the last few days — which is going to make me miss him all the more when the inevitable return to the dorm (and the ceremonial lugging of the piano back through the lobby) come on Sunday.
Alex is off on a two-week stint for his new out-of-state job, so Sean has been extra helpful with shoveling, and picking up Claire from play practice when I can’t do it, and running errands for me, and loading stuff onto my new laptop. (Even though I’ve now officially joined the 21st century by having a laptop, I sure as heck couldn’t do such things by myself.)
I’m hardly alone in feeling the weight of this “phase two” of the first-year goodbyes. Yesterday I heard from a friend who sent his daughter back to school this past Sunday. He wrote, “It was sad all around to put Amy on the bus.” I know that parents everywhere are feeling the same thing as they put their children on vans and trains and planes and buses. We’ve had a reprieve from the restructured families that we’d been living as all fall, but now we have to face reality again.
The good news is that Sean is a much more confident and worldly guy than the one who left us in August. He’s become fully immersed in and passionate about what he’s studying; he’s met lots of people; he’s getting a sense of what he wants to do this summer and for the rest of his time in college; and he’s made friends. That’s probably the most pleasing thing of all to me. Heaven knows, we all need friends.
Alex is off on a two-week stint for his new out-of-state job, so Sean has been extra helpful with shoveling, and picking up Claire from play practice when I can’t do it, and running errands for me, and loading stuff onto my new laptop. (Even though I’ve now officially joined the 21st century by having a laptop, I sure as heck couldn’t do such things by myself.)
I’m hardly alone in feeling the weight of this “phase two” of the first-year goodbyes. Yesterday I heard from a friend who sent his daughter back to school this past Sunday. He wrote, “It was sad all around to put Amy on the bus.” I know that parents everywhere are feeling the same thing as they put their children on vans and trains and planes and buses. We’ve had a reprieve from the restructured families that we’d been living as all fall, but now we have to face reality again.
The good news is that Sean is a much more confident and worldly guy than the one who left us in August. He’s become fully immersed in and passionate about what he’s studying; he’s met lots of people; he’s getting a sense of what he wants to do this summer and for the rest of his time in college; and he’s made friends. That’s probably the most pleasing thing of all to me. Heaven knows, we all need friends.
