Alone-Going 101

I see those parents dropping off their cherished children at college.

I see photos of the family minivan - so recently scattered with Cheerios and Happy Meal toys - now filled to the windows with clothes, bedding, and furniture. I see dads manning a push-cart full of belongings up a sidewalk and into a dorm elevator. I see moms helping their children make the twin-sized bed, unfurl the curtains across the window, fold into drawers the clothes that suddenly seem so big and still so small. I see fierce goodbye hugs laced with tears, parents telling children to call home every single day to check in. A complicated potpourri of pride and joy and grief and embarrassment. 

And I remember how my going-off-to-college experience looked nothing like that. 

As a child of parents who couldn't be relied upon, I mostly did it alone.

My dorm, 1998

I suppose I always assumed I'd go to college. I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I'd been told over and over that college was the first step to a life of success. Yet I had little faith I'd recognize that success when I saw it, having seen so little.   

I think my teachers and parents assumed I'd go to college, too. When one graduates eighth in her high school class of more than 200, people expect she'll go far. And everyone assumes someone else will show her how to do it.

My high school band director, who had quietly watched over me during the previous four years, told me I was going to college no matter what. He knew that my getting a degree in anything at all was the best way for me to get to a better future. Always one to follow instructions, I decided to apply.

I only considered one university, and I went alone to check it out. It didn't cross my mind to ask either of my parents to come with me. By then I was in the foster house because of my parents' housing instability. Although I was still in contact with my mother regularly and my dad sporadically, neither had money for a road trip and motel stay. 

So there was no student-led tour of campus or family day luncheon with administrators before I picked a place. Just me in my purple letter jacket in the misty autumn rain, shadowing a student who had graduated from my high school three years before. We had been in band class together when I was a freshman and she a senior.

The school had a strong music program so I could continue to play flute, and a strong teacher track because I suspected I might want to be an Honors or Advanced Placement English teacher. (Turns out I was wrong about that.) University enrollment at this school was several times larger than the population of my hometown, and everything looked expansive and promising to me - so much bigger and shinier than where I came from. 

Most importantly, the university was 125 miles from my hometown, far enough to leave behind the tumult of my childhood and adolescence. An acceptance letter sealed the deal. 

As the fall semester approached, I told my mother I planned to move in without her. I probably pointed out that there wasn't much for her to help with anyway. She didn't push back, but her already-small rib cage deflated and her gaze dropped to the floor. She would have been happy to take that trip with me, to see my new dorm room and the new life that spread out before me. 

But everything from my childhood, including her, was stained with failure and loss. I needed a clean break and a chance to start over in a place that was all my own. After having so little that I could claim, I was greedy and selfish about this opportunity. I gripped it like the only life preserver in the world. 

On top of that, I couldn't handle my mom staring wide-eyed and teary at the campus as though it was a palace on a cloud rather than a simple state school in the woods. Although both of my parents had earned college degrees once upon a time, their standards of living had plummeted since then. My mother saw things from different eyes than I did. She was so far in a hole, everything that wasn't dirt glittered like gold.    

The day I left for college, she settled for an intense, emotional hug then watched my taillights grow smaller and smaller until they disappeared. It must have felt like watching me grow up but instead of getting bigger I was getting smaller, and then she let me go. I don't know what that felt like for her, since we hadn't shared a home in almost a year. 

For me, it was a continuation of alone. Inside my car, it was just me and a pile of my CDs. Matchbox 20 said it had been a long day, and it was barely past noon.

In the end, I didn't move in entirely by myself. My (now former) band director, who had paid the deposit on my dorm room from his own pocket, followed me in his truck for the two-plus-hour drive. Then he helped carry a few boxes and bags into my new dorm room, and gave me a solid hug. This was the same university he and his wife had both attended, and they turned out to be fine, respectable people. I hoped I would, too.

I called my mom and told her I had arrived. And as I watched out the dorm window while my only successful role model drove away, I thought, "What do I do now?"

I'm still figuring it out.

When I see images of well-adjusted parents getting their beloved children settled into the next phase of their lives, I feel a little bit lost. What would that have been like, to have even one parent who was capable of shepherding me through childhood? How much did it hurt my mother when I rejected what little she had to offer in order to give myself a chance? 

A deep sadness opens inside my chest like a wound. Who am I in those pictures I see - the parent or the child or both? Who would I have been if I hadn't had to raise myself?  

Dorm room, fifth floor, 1998