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College Tour

College Tour

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It’s been four years since we did this the last time.

Four years since we sat in a darkened auditorium and listened to an admissions director discuss interdisciplinary learning.

Four years since we were last told how to submit a FAFSA.

Four years (or almost that; we did one brief tour this spring and another this summer) since we sauntered through a college campus following a student ambassador who has mastered the art of  walking backward.

Four years, which seems like no time at all — except that a wispy 13-year-old has become a willowy 17-year-old. And we are embarking on our last few college tours.

Now we’re the ones who understand the difference between early decision and early action. We’re the application veterans, with the battle scars to prove it.

But there’s one thing we haven’t mastered yet — and that is saying goodbye. 

Valedictory Frame of Mind

Valedictory Frame of Mind

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I hadn’t meant to wind up at the girls’ elementary school, but that’s where our walk took us. Copper and I had crossed Fox Mill Road, taken a dirt path down to the creek, tiptoed over the spillway (thanks to the low water), trotted down what seems to be an old road along the stream and then trudged up a steep path along a ridge line and (pant, pant — that would be both Copper and me) arrived at the school grounds.

Even though we live less than two miles from the place, it’s tucked away on county parkland and I hadn’t been there in months, maybe years. Only a few days earlier I had gone to my last back-to-school night ever, what was probably my 36th, give or take a few (three children times 12 years), so seeing the old school so soon after that event put me in a valedictory frame of mind.

I kept seeing ghosts of the girls’ former selves, the field days and plant sales in the big field to the east of the school; the playground on that side, too, where we used to come on still summer afternoons (before most of the equipment was deemed unsafe and replaced with boring, innocuous stuff), the mornings when we’d walk to school or I’d drop the girls off at the kiss-and-ride lane.

How big the place once seemed, how imposing. It was a first foray into the real world for them, and such a gentle, loving entry into that world. Almost a decade of dealing with the high school (with its thousands of students and a sign-in process that seems modeled on that of a maximum-security prison) have made me forget what school was like when it was close and comfortable and small-scale.

I miss those years. But I wouldn’t want to live them again.

A much older, smaller (one-room) schoolhouse in our neighborhood.

Three Continents

Three Continents

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Yesterday, I went to a neighborhood party where I gratefully picked out familiar faces from a sea of new, mostly young, ones. Kids were everywhere, on the swings, the slide and right beside the birthday girl, as she blew out the candles on her cake.

What struck me most is how alike these young people looked. They were all so, well, little.

How quickly we forget. How quickly the days of naps and tantrums give way to graduations and goodbyes. How quickly the tangible family, the family right here in the same house bickering and hugging and being mightily present to each other, gives way to what one might call a family of the air, one connected by texts and phone calls; a family spread around the country and — in our case right now — the globe. (With Tom in Serbia on a business trip, we are on three continents.)

But here’s the amazing part — it only makes us closer.  Three continents, one family. It’s a funny equation, but it adds up.

What We Did on Our Summer Vacations

What We Did on Our Summer Vacations

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As one’s children grow up and out, as friends and boyfriends become a center of gravity, as one’s own career demands make travel difficult, there comes a point — often unknown till it’s past — when the family vacation is over.

This does not mean it will never come again (she tells herself optimistically). But if it comes again it will be in a different form, often atomized (two of us visiting a third) and not all of us together again until people are older and more settled.

So for now, for us, the family vacation season is over and the just-for-two vacation season hasn’t yet begun. It makes me sad to admit this, but I can’t complain. We’ve had a good run. Together we’ve seen much of this country, have sampled Canada and even once ventured across the Atlantic. The glories of the Grand Canyon, Big Sur, Yosemite (where Claire turned 16) and the Maine Coast (where Claire turned 17 — ah, the inconvenience and the privilege of the summer birthday) were all ours to share.

This summer two of us went to Montana, another went to Africa and one is leaving today for the beach. We’ve made quick trips to Kentucky and Indiana. But all together, well, the last trip we all made together was going out to dinner at Reston Town Center. We sat on little chairs and ate our food off short tables. We laughed and talked about the “cougar bar” across the street. It was a good vacation.

To Be In Benin

To Be In Benin

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Today Suzanne visits the town of Toura, Benin, West Africa, for the first time. It’s in the far north of the country, in the Alibori region near Banikoara and close to an elephant migration route. She’ll be teaching English to middle-school students there for the next two years. It’s the first time a Peace Corps volunteer has served at this school.

The purpose of the visit is to meet people, visit her hut and see what she’ll need to order or buy to make herself at home in Africa.  Then she’ll return to Porto Novo for more language study and training before she starts teaching in September.

One of the big questions on Suzanne’s mind is how far the well pump is from her hut. She’ll have no electricity or running water so this is not an insignificant question. Already I’ve been turning on the tap less often, reusing sudsy water, thinking more about what goes down the drain. There’s no way to ship it to her, of course. It’s purely sympathetic. A futile attempt to be in Benin with her.

When I do a Google image search on Toura, what comes up most are pictures of wells (water portals) like this one. Image: watsanportal.org.

Twenty-one!

Twenty-one!

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Claire arrived two weeks later than we thought she would, waiting for a break in the heat wave (back when heat waves meant temperatures in the 90s instead of the 100s) to make her debut.

She was a cuddly baby, a tempestuous toddler and, well, we’ll just say a lively teenager.  Now she’s a lovely, caring, accomplished young woman heading into her senior year of college. And today she turns 21.

Back when I wrote parenting articles and the children were younger, I would routinely mine their antics for anecdotes. I don’t do that anymore, of course. But on some days I can’t help but note how proud I am of them, how they continue to amaze me, how very grateful I am to be their mother.

Today is one of those days.

First Race

First Race

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This morning, Claire competes in her first road race. She’s been running for a couple of months now, and she’s ready to compete. And I’m excited she’s doing it. Running meant a lot to me when I was her age; it gave me confidence that I, a klutz, could actually do something athletic.

Claire has never had that problem. She is naturally coordinated; she makes ice skating and rollerblading look easy. But this is still a big deal because it is such a disciplined and regulated activity. It is the sort of thing one does to push one’s self. And as such, is a good illustration of the kind of person Claire is becoming.

So this morning when the race begins, and Claire feels that little flutter in her stomach that’s reserved for the new things we do in life, I’ll be feeling it with her.

Long Afternoon

Long Afternoon

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Midday walk, less hot than the day before.  White clouds emerge in the sky, meaning there is less haze. I take a familiar route in the opposite direction, which is strangely disorienting. The pond is on my left, the woods on my right. I have to remind myself where I am.

I have to remind myself, also, who I am. I pass kids on their way to the pool. A pair of boys, eleven or twelve, pad by in flip flops with towels around their necks. All I hear of their conversation are the words “post traumatic stress.” A strange utterance; they look like they should be talking about the cannonballs they’ll do at the pool.

Still, they remind me of the great long afternoons of childhood,  the slow-moving stillness of the hour after lunch. I remember the smell of that hour, the hot sun on the swing, the grape candy stick, plans for later in the day, a trip to the park, wading in its cool creek.

I feel like a kid again for a few minutes, though it’s only because I was walking on my lunch hour, pretending for a few minutes that I have no responsibilities, only miles to walk and books to read.

Benin Bound

Benin Bound

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When we moved to Virginia, Suzanne was a six-month old baby. Today she flies to Benin, West Africa, to begin two-plus years of Peace Corps service. The room into which she’s crammed two decades worth of books and photos, dreams and plans — that room is preternaturally tidy now.

I made myself go in it late yesterday, though I would just as soon have left the door closed. But as she begins her adventure overseas, we begin the adventure of living without her.

It’s what you do as a parent and as a human being, learn to live without the ones you love.  This time the sadness has a fullness to it, though, a sense of life renewing itself. And that makes me grateful for it, in the same way that I’m glad for much-needed rain or the first crisp days of fall.

I don’t know where Suzanne will be stationed in this strange new country. Will it be in the south, near the water, or in the north, near the Sahel? More likely somewhere in the middle.

All I know is that the map of Benin that Suzanne studied for months is now in my possession. I’m the one studying its towns and rivers; I’m the one dreaming about the day when I can visit this faraway place.

 

Longest Day

Longest Day

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Tom and Celia head to Montana today, which means their longest day will be even longer. And which means that last night was the last time in a long time that we’ll all be together.

We sat on the deck until well past 10, picking at what was left of the quiche I made for dinner, lighting candles, discussing everything from ESPN to circular time. At one point we stopped talking to check on Copper, who was tangling with some wild creature (a fox?) in the back of our yard. Our little dog can always be counted on for comic relief.

Eventually the conversation came around to Africa, to the trips we’ll make there and what we’ll do when we arrive. It was a good topic on which to land. It is the optimistic approach, the sunny approach, what you think about on the longest day.