Letting Go

Last year dropping The Boy off at college was a completely different experience than this year. Not different better or different worse. Just different.

Last year, since it was his first year, we all had a day of orientation. I remember being excited and highly interested in being oriented, but the only part of it I clearly remember now is The Reading of the Letters.

Oh? There was reading involved? Why yes there was! We, the parents, were read to. By our student's advisor. Individually, yet in a group: The Reading of the Letters. Parents, I must say you should consider yourself extraordinarily fortunate if, when you attend your child's college orientation, you, too, are regaled with The Reading of the Letters.

A portion of the orientation activity was conducted with the parents separated from their student. The students went one way as the parents were led in a different direction for different activities. As mentioned previously, I don't recall any of those activities in great detail with the exception of the one I'm writing about. (And I was paying attention. Really.) The last activity before we were reunited with our children had us gathered in a classroom, sitting in desks all facing front. In walked The Advisor. Who began a very thoughtful lecture on the process of Letting Your Children Go.

We parents nervously punctuated his lecture with laughs in appropriate places. We guiltily looked down at our hands when he hit on something we knew we had done even though we knew when we were doing it we shouldn't. I wasn't the only one sweating over the enormity of what we were about to do and what could happen if we hadn't done it right when we started doing whatever we had been doing that brought us to this place to begin with. The business of raising a child is fraught with peril. Overall, it was an emotion-invoking lecture. I really wanted to reach over and hold Wendy's hand, but couldn't bring myself to do it.

It was what I considered a typical group of parents, varied ages although not particularly racially diverse. Outside of Wendy and me, the parents who were paired were paired off heterosexually. And as a lesbian couple in a primarily heterosexual world, sometimes it is just better not to draw attention to ourselves by holding hands or such in public. (I hope you heteros appreciate the freedom you have. Some days I'm brave enough to grab my own bit of freedom and embrace it fully. But on that particular day at that particular time, I just wasn't. The day was hard enough already.)

Anyway, back to The Reading of the Letters. The Advisor, as he lectured, held a bunch of papers in his hand. There was a brief question and answer period. Most of the questions came from parents of athletes. Wendy and I didn't ask any questions. Then he announced, as he held out the papers, that what he was holding in his hand were letters from our students. Advice from our children. Advice on how to let them go.

Then came the twist. The Advisor was just going to read them aloud without saying who wrote them. We parents were supposed to figure out which letter was written by our student. He started reading. And what I thought had been an emotional day so far became even more so. The touching tribute written by a daughter to the father who had raised her alone. The humorous list of all the things one fellow was sure his family was going to miss about having him around. Another with specific, very specific, instructions on how to care for the family pet. The obvious amount of love this group of parents had given to their children spoke clearly through these letters.

Sometimes parents would be thinking a particular letter came from their student when in fact it was from another. There were exclamations of "That one is mine! Definitely mine!" when a positive identification was made. The one that began "Dear Old Folks" garnered mild gasps of dismay as folks glanced sideways at one couple who were obviously older than the rest of us. Wendy and I didn't gasp. Because we knew that was the one from The Boy. And that's when I did grab Wendy's hand. It was involuntary and just had to be. So it was.

By the time all the letters were read and claimed, there was not a dry eye in the house. We all got to keep them. Those letters. That advice. What a prize indeed.

Now how's this for a bizarre random thought? After Wendy and I die, that letter is one of the things The Boy will find among our possessions. Without a doubt. Think he'll remember writing it? Or be surprised to find it?


For hoots: freshman and sophomore Drop Off Day Memorial Snapshots!


He hasn't changed much at all in a year!
Ha! Only as much as we all have.