Leaving My Daughter at College
I wind the back-up clock,
a fuschia and orange travel alarm from the era when I went to college. Thirty minutes left to say a lifetime of emotions. We got the clock at a yard sale earlier in the summer after graduation when college still seemed a far-off dream. Now twenty-nine minutes left. I must settle you in the cinder-block comfort of dorm decor. Curtain rods consume my obsessions. My baby’s leaving home and suddenly curtain rods take on huge significance? Twenty-five minutes till the curtains rise on your new life. Where did we put those pillowcases? I unwrap the new King-sized pillow, encasing it in 300-thread-count, Egyptian-cotton tears. Twenty minutes to ready my shoulders to pillow silent sobs. I go to the bathroom where I’m greeted by signs about what to do in case of sexual assault. Fifteen minutes and I’m panicked you won’t be safe won’t know what to do, how to take care of yourself by eating lots of colors, ordering yourself to bed when tired, consoling yourself when scared, asserting your views, your wants, your needs, finding the right friends who’ll love your wit and nurture your mind and spirit and tell you you’re overreacting as the drama/trauma princess you are, daughter of me, its queen. Ten minutes to soothe and settle myself to say goodbye. So I attend to the mundane out of which love is constructed as surely as any dorm bed loft. I straighten the comforter, shut the storage doors right, adjust the fan, finding last-minute advice futile, yet trying to make up for all the words love lacks. I finally remember the words God gave and in the last five minutes I bless you. We huddle as family in prayer and then I say the ancient words God gave all priests to say at times such as these: “The Lord bless you and keep you. May God’s face light up in delight as the Lord looks upon you with favor and grants you peace.” Then I give you back to God, and with Hannah’s broken heart I walk away from the temple of learning with one last view of your tearful silhouette against the window’s light behind you just like the first day I left you at daycare standing on “the bridge” at the window waving goodbye in a haze of tears screaming in wild abandon. “Go find the other kids and play,” I say, seeing only my baby now--not the young woman. But, as ever, straightening your shoulders, you do. Then suddenly I know: it’s ok; it's time. © 2007, Tess Lockhart. All rights reserved. |