The Campus Goodbye

They say it goes fast and it does though when they are young (infants) and cranky (with colic) and crying in the middle of the night (ugh) it seems as if time is standing still and you will never ever be able to recover from all the lost hours. But somehow you do. Things get better. They get older. And bigger. Soon enough they are walking and talking and before you know it there are three sentient beings tugging at your pant leg asking questions (so many goddamn questions). This was before you had a mobile so you actually had to rifle through your brain for the answers. “Are you sure about that, Dad?” they would ask and truth be told you weren’t entirely. But they let you off the hook because you were treating them to ice cream at Holstein’s, even as they sensed you were reaching. As they got older, you could overhear some of their conversations with friends. “He just makes up the answers,” they would say. Or this: “He tells stories.” Somehow they knew.

 

They fell down (they all fall down) and if you were lucky it was (is) nothing serious but there were always times when it looked serious. Like that time she fell off the hammock (how did she get on the fucking hammock in the first place) and there was blood everywhere (there is always blood) and later a trip to the hospital (those too) and stitches (you wind up keeping a tally of all the stitches). She was fine, but she was your first, and your wife wasn’t home so you knew there was going to be an accusation.

“You were supposed to be watching her.”

“I was.”

“You let her on the hammock?”

“I didn’t see her on the hammock.”

“Then you weren’t watching her.”

“It happened fast.”

Life happens fast. Your Joan Didion.” And then she turns her back and is gone.

 

The fights never lasted long and they were always about the kids. About what you should be or should’ve been doing or what you didn’t do right or at all and why am I always the one getting up in the middle of the night and “No, I am not interested in having sex right now” and why are all men so clueless and what was I thinking when I married you.

“C’mon. It’s not that bad.”

“No. It’s worse.” Again she is gone.

 

Life animates in a way you never thought possible. You feel mortal, sense danger, become terrified at odd moments. Children make the house electric – introduce an intractable fear and tension into every marriage. You spar with your spouse over, well, everything. But you punch your way through it. You make adjustments, become accountable, let your spouse direct you, learn to be a better partner, and eventually contribute in small ways that mean a lot so that when you make a mistake or say or do something dumb that you later regret there is a track record that weighs in your favor.

“What were you thinking?” Wife.

“I guess I wasn’t. Thinking.”

“Why did I fall in love with such an asshole?” Staring.

“I did the dishes.” And once again she is gone.

 

During the middle and high school years, everything accelerates. Where once afternoons were long and days plentiful and life seemed to move at a curious leisure (the pack and play years), at middle school the clock becomes a presence.  There are always lunches to make and schools to arrive at and doctors to visit and team practices to attend. There are weekday field trips, weekend movies and game days. Idle moments are few. You are an aide, tutor, chauffeur, dresser, launderer, coach and cook.  You look forward to the end of the school year for the reprieve it offers. Also, summer brings vacation, and vacations have always been great fun for the family.

 

Car trips were (are) something we excel at. We drove to Maine. Montreal. Nova Scotia. Cape Breton. North Carolina. These are long trips to make as five in one car, and we managed to complete all of them without incident. Each of the trips had a summer soundtrack. We all sang out loud and off key. And the only consistent trauma went something like this:

“On no.” Son.

“Dad. Please. No.” Daughter.

“Oh my fucking god.” Other daughter (she was older now).

“Hon, do we really need to stop at another farm stand?” Wife. Farm stands, as it turns out, are my fatal flaw.

 

Graduation advances like a bullet. You have things you want to say – and moments when you want to say them – but before you can say anything at all they are out the door to the mall to a party to another game to a concert to a sleepover. You see them briefly and talk less and less and when they do approach you it’s usually with an ask or a story or a tell. But still, you welcome the interaction. They are not exactly strangers living under your roof but they are distant until that one day when they hand you their mobile and say something like “Dad, look at this line of thunderstorms coming through” and then you ask them to name three meteorologists on the Weather Channel and they name five and you know they are not strangers but yours and will always be yours and you have given them an appreciation for heavy weather though this is, of course, mitigated by farm stand trauma.

 

College preparation is tense. Grades assume a weight, and the kids are in need of policing. There are tests, essays, campus visits. And there is accounting. The accounting is rigorous, falling on your shoulders, and boy oh boy are you thankful that your old man instilled in you a sense of fiscal prudence and the need to plan. You think about the man he was and what he gave you – love, confidence, a cautious fiscal nature – and pray that you are half his equal. College is expensive and there really is no getting around it unless you have a scholarship student which we did not though of course we thought of them that way and were always surprised to hear that so and so was going to this ivy on a lacrosse scholarship. Lacrosse. Jee-zus.

 

The arrival on campus is eventful and includes buoyant “Hellos” and “Welcomes” and throttling embraces from strangers. There is loud music and dancing in the dorm lobby and on the quad. A young man with a long beard and wearing a “Feel the Bern” t-shirt walks up to you, offers you a beer, and shakes your hand. “It’s not the end, man,” he says, “It’s a beginning. She’ll be fine.” You pause, think back, and can’t recall your first day on campus being anything like this much, well, fun. Your daughter, however, is tentative, on the hunt for her roommate, a Facebook friend whom she has yet to meet, and sees her for the first time standing in their empty dorm room.

“Natalie?”

“Sarah?”

And then, without hesitation, they fall into each other’s arms. They stand together for a long time, heads on shoulders, holding each other up, something they will do time and again during their freshman year together. And then they part and begin the long unpacking.

 

Errands are a welcome distraction at this time. Trips to Bed, Bath and Beyond and Best Buy and Home Goods and Lowes and Whole Foods for sheets, pillows, comforters, carpets, toasters, mini-fridges, fans, lava lamps (still a thing), dried fruits, nuts and yogurt. The lines are long, all full of parents, many of them lost. “These kids need to learn the art of Kondo,” one of them says to you. “Hard to believe the markets are tanking in light of all this consumption,” says another.

 

Goodbyes are said in parking lots, in dorm rooms and hallways, after dinner at local restaurants. And they are hard on everyone. There are hugs and tears and then there is the drive away when a sixteen-year old boy who has only known life with two sisters suddenly finds himself alone in the backseat with the dog who is whimpering and pawing at the car window, as if trying to wave goodbye.

 

Not much is said as we exit the campus parking lot. My wife and I exchange glances and smiles, holding hands over the center console as we drive to the interstate. I know what she is thinking and she knows what I am thinking. We are casting back to the summer, to a night in Corolla when we were all gathered on a cottage deck watching Cumulonimbus clouds build in the west and lightning dart across the sky. There was thunder, and rough surf, and breathtaking late afternoon light. “This is awesome, Dad,” one of the children said. “Totally,” another chimed in.

 

You wind back more. To the previous summer, and a long paddle trip down the Osgood river, when a portage through the woods seemed endless. “Dad, do you know where we are going?” Daughter.

“Sure thing.”

“He has no idea where we are going.” Son.

“Leave your father alone.” Wife.

Eventually we get there. I had a sense of where we were going, but will admit, ours may not have been the most direct route.

“This is the river?” Son.

“Dad, it’s three feet wide.” Daughter.

“Are you sure this is the river?” Wife.

“It’s the mouth of the river.” Me. “It gets wider.”

It doesn’t widen for a while. The water is moving fast and we are being whipped by alder branches and having to portage over blow downs and beaver dams. I had, of course, imagined something completely different when planning this excursion, a wide expanse of river and sky, a paddle of some ease.

“Is it supposed to be like this?” Daughter.

“Absolutely.” Me.

“You are so full of shit.” Wife.

 

You wind back even more (it’s a long drive) to the swim meets, to the vacations in Maine, to the first time you set one of your daughters down in the sand on the beach in Biddeford Pool and she immediately proceeded to crawl into the water. She loved the ocean from the outset – is like her late grandfather in that way.

 

You were in the delivery room for all of them. Sarah’s birth was long and painful (even with the epi), Isabel came in a hurry, and Michael’s was the last. “We are so done here,” your wife said in the delivery room, staring at you with a menacing look, squeezing your hand hard enough to crush it, and you remember thinking how lucky you were to get out of there alive.

 

I have been fortunate, working in a profession (and for a company) that has allowed me to be present in the lives of my children. My father always said you should be like a fencepost, there to lean on, and that requires being around. He wasn’t perfect but he set a good example and somehow drilled into me an invaluable code of conduct – arrive early, work hard, always prepare, be accountable, value friendship, shoot straight, treat your wife like a queen, and don’t give up on your kids (or the Jets). I have tried to emulate his best attributes, and on good days, I see many of them in my children. Sarah has his grit, Isabel his heart, and Michael his passion, though sadly, it attached to his forlorn Jets.

 

When my best friend Bob was dying from leukemia, Isabel came to visit him in the hospital. He was a brother to me and an uncle to her, and when it was over, we all felt the loss. Isabel left for camp a few days after he died, and in her first dispatch home, she wrote: “I think about Uncle Bob all the time and so I wrote him a letter and I know that’s crazy but it made me feel better. When I finished I crumpled it up and threw it the campfire and watched the ashes fly up in the sky towards the stars. You think he’ll get it? I hope he does. PS: Did Grandpa baptize me? I seem to remember he did and all my Boston friends think that’s kind of wacky. Love Izzy.”

 

Grandpa did baptize Isabel – in fact, he baptized all of our children. If I disappointed my father in one arena it was in the arena of Catholic faith which I was never able to fully embrace and I think a lot of it had to do with watching my mother die from cancer when I was nineteen. Dad was able to maintain his faith through it all but I could not. None of it made sense. So I balked at the church and never looked back and my wife felt the same way about religion (her dad died when she was a teenager too) and so our kids grew up as children of atheists. Dad never stopped believing or hoping for my (our) return and one day when he was visiting he pulled out a bottle of Lourdes water and made all the kids come into the living room and, one by one, bent them back over his knee and anointed them as Catholics.

“What does the water do, Grandpa?”

“It protects you.”

“From what?”

“All the bad in the world.”

“What in the water protects us?”

“Faith.”

He tried to baptize Laura but she would have no part of it.

“I love your father but he’s fucking crazy with that Lourdes water.”

It made him feel better, knowing that if something was to happen, we’d all have a shot.

“I don’t want to be alone up there with your mother, son.”

 

Matters of faith aside, I valued my father’s counsel. I could always go to him, no matter what the circumstance. When I did something wrong – and I was always doing something wrong – he never made me feel worse about it. He knew I felt bad enough – that in their heart, most kids do when they make a mistake. Instead, he’d talk me through it, always making sure I recognized the error of my ways.

“I know you can do better,” he would say. And when I got older, this: “Your mom believed in you, son. Don’t let her down.”

 

When our children do something wrong, I think about what my dad would say, how he would react. When they come home drunk. Or stoned. Or drunk and stoned (or worse). Those can be tough moments and conversations, and I think for many of us our first instinct is to put the hammer down. But I’m not sure how wise a choice that is. My wife thinks I’m too lenient.

“You let them get away with everything.”

“It’s just a little weed.”

“On a school night?”

“Right. Well. I’ll have a talk with her.”

 

Of course, when my father was alive, he was singularly unhelpful when it came to policing their behavior.

“Your dad was a pothead and a drunk and a thief when he was your age,” he would announce to the kids over Sunday dinner. “I had to bail him out of jail every other weekend.”

Dad.”

“What? You turned out alright.” And then (to the grandchildren), “Look at your old man now: married a fine woman. Got a pretty good job, too, though why he is publishing that piece of shit Clinton I’ll never know.”

 

We all want our kids to make good choices and I suppose that starts by setting a good example at home. I’m not sure I’ve set the best one but still I haven’t been as bad as some. I wasn’t smoking pot as some parents were (are). I wasn’t coming home drunk. I wasn’t absent. I do regret the absence of faith in their life, blame myself, worry about what will happen should things get bumpy especially if we’re not around. Because maybe God is some kind of stopgap from disaster, there to help people through hard times. Isabel is attending a Catholic college, so possibly all is not lost. There is still hope. And even in the absence of an ecclesiastical intervention, they do, after all, have an appreciation for the natural world, have come to understand the importance of sunrises and sunsets and solitude and that is in some ways is as important as religion. As is the fact that we have given them all our love and the best advice we can: don’t put yourself or others in harms way. Don’t make a decision you’ll regret. And whatever you do, don’t date frat boys.

 

Our daughters occupy a lot of space in our home. They fight with their brother and mother and each other. They’re not neat and often selfish and weeks can go by when they’re only available to us via text on their mobiles. They live on the third floor and I went up there once during high school and honestly it looked as if a bomb had gone off. There were clothes everywhere as well as bongs and empty vodka bottles which got me thinking about what my wife had said about my being too lenient and so I immediately collected all the paraphernalia and went downstairs and set everything I found on the kitchen table and called a family meeting.

“What the hell is going on here?”

The girls just looked at me.

“One of the bongs isn’t mine.” Isabel. “It belongs to a friend. The big one is mine.”

“Those bottles are like from last year, Dad.” Sarah.

“You have no idea what the hell goes on up there.” Michael.

Laura just rolled her eyes at me.

 

It doesn’t sound like I am a very good parent or would be sad to see them go but of course I am sad for the absence it brings and hollow I feel and emptiness that descends upon the house. Among the many attributes of teenage daughters is the heightened drama they bring to the home, a real frisson, with many interactions assuming the contours of a fifties noir novel. As far as the parenting, it is what it is. They kids are all alive. And my wife and I are still married.

 

One autumn evening during high school they were at a party with a friend who was drinking then drunk and finally close to passing out when we got the call. They were drunk too and scared and didn’t know what to do because the cops were coming and everyone had bolted once they heard ‘cops’ even as their friend was in trouble and needed help. Things were spiraling out of control. You told them to sit tight, you’d be right over and got there in a heartbeat and they said whatever you do don’t call her parents.

“That’s what she told us before she passed out.”

“Her parents will kill her if they find out.”

You got them all in the car and went straight to the hospital and then you called her parents who didn’t seem surprised or overly concerned. “Is she alive,” one of them said, sounding a little drunk themselves. The attending doctor came out to thank the girls. She was going to be OK. The parents never spoke with us again, and the friend never spoke to the girls either.

“You did the right thing, calling us.”

“Can we go home now? I think I’m gonna puke.”

 

I don’t have all the answers and made up an awful lot of what I told them growing up and worry about what conclusions they will draw as they get older.

“Did I teach them anything?”

“You taught them how to fish,” my wife replies, “with worms.”

 

I had the conversation with my son. “Treat women with respect.”

“I know, Dad.”

“’No’ means ‘No.’ Always.”

“But you told me ‘No’ doesn’t always mean ‘No.’”

“When did I say that?”

“I don’t know. It had something to do with work.”

“Oh. Right. I was speaking about my profession. Public relations. Where sometimes ‘No’ requires a reframing of the ask. In my job you have to find a way to get to ‘Yes.’ I wasn’t talking about relationships with girls.”

“I don’t know, Dad. Sounds like you have a shitty job.”

 

We all have regrets, and as a parent, you just hope the mistakes you’ve made don’t hold your kids back or result in them staying away for too long (or for good). There were times when I lost my temper, when I said things I shouldn’t have said, when they were aching inside and wanted help but I didn’t see it because I was busy, home but not present, answering an email from a colleague when I should’ve been listening to them, and when I realized my mistake it was too late, they had said what they needed to say and I had missed it, “What was that, hon?” and she said, “Nothing. Don’t worry about it,” and was gone.

 

Here is the thing about being a parent: they don’t give you more time. You have what you have and you don’t get any of it back and you never want to arrive at that moment when you realize all or even just a little of what you should’ve been doing with them but weren’t because you were busy doing something else instead. They won’t come if you’re not there. And you can’t resent them for having misplaced a trust when you’ve been absent from their life at critical moments.

 

Upon our return home, the dog walks upstairs to the third floor landing and lies down outside our daughters’ bedrooms. When I go to visit her later she hardly moves. Her head is resting on one of their pillows and she looks sad. Their rooms look different – clean, empty.

 

Life settles into a post summer rhythm. We are both back to work, having delivered our daughters to their senior and sophomore years respectively. School has started for our son, who surfaces from the basement occasionally. One night, over dinner, without prompting, he says, “I miss them.” It is an honest declaration and observation, without sentiment. “We miss them too.” Rabbit rabbit.

 

I miss the conversations most of all.

 

A few weeks ago, before they returned to college, a friend sent me an email, asking if we were interested in coming to Buffalo in January to watch the Jets play the Bills in Orchard Park. Last game of the season. I introduced this proposition to our daughters and son over dinner. “Last game of the season,” I said, “Buffalo in January. First Sunday of the New Year.” Without hesitation, they all raised their hands and said “In.”

 

There is this: we have always travelled well as a family.

 

It does go fast. But if you’re lucky, it doesn’t end. The campus goodbye is simply a beginning.

 

Buffalo. In January. Here we come.