Little Shambles Goes to College

I dropped my daughter off at college today - and spent a good part assembling IKEA furniture and manhandling the dorm pieces to arrange the room into her ideal configuration. It was a pretty heavy day for her and left me burned out, but she seems to be okay about it and I'm sure she'll be fine on her new adventure.

My first mind fuck was driving into town and realizing I was doing the same thing with my parents 19 years ago. 19 years ago? Damn. I saw all these "kids" checking in, wandering about, getting their bearings (hello ladies!), and floated back to my experience, specifically my experience on move-in day.

I was a suburban white kid rolling into a 4-person room with my punk/goth/indie CD collection. Focus on Biotech (ended: Eng/Psy degrees). I think I'd had one brief conversation with each of my roommates on the home phone. No one had cell phones. I ended up with a brilliant crew: A cool guy with similar music and geeky tastes, a skinny white kid who was in love with rap, and a HS jock who brought his iguana, Gimpy. And while there were some differences in opinion, we were all cordial and had a great and amazing year with each other.

And then the feelings of waste and want to go back. How I could've done things better. I spent my last year in drink and drugs and had lost almost all contact with those wonderful people. But, y'know, get over it; you can't go back; it was what it was.

I'd spent part of last night compiling a mix CD for Little and it was hard to keep the eyes dry.



I was very worried that all of today would be me weeping, but it didn't hit me until my second mind fuck: after driving 4 hours there, spending 7 hours in the move-in process and dinner, and 4 hours back, I didn't lose it. It was walking back into the apartment and realizing that bedroom was now just an extra room. She won't be back for months. Waterworks.

Mini will be fine. She's got most of her family about an hour away and with smartphones, she's just a text away.

Sleep and process. I'll be fine too.

And then Monday is the dissolutionment, but that's another post on the other blog.

Thanks for reading.