SEPTEMBER
1969: So why was my whole family still hanging around
hours after we’d unpacked my jeans and laid a yellow Indian spread across
the bed in my Blake Hall room? Couldn’t my parents see that
I was ready for them to leave so Life could begin? Thirty-three years later, when my son headed to Berkeley, I
understood.
To my 18-year-old self, starting Revelle College felt like
winning one of those TV game shows where an exciting prize
waited behind every door. To my mother
and father, of course, seeing me in my dorm room reminded them that part
of their life was over.
Actually, without kids at home my parents’ lives
moved in satisfying, new directions. But as my son eagerly anticipated
his own freshman year, memories
of my first days at UC
San Diego floated back. I wrote this essay—surprised to be reliving the
experience, this time seasoned with a dash of parental melancholy. ***
With his admission to college, our teenage son
is now dreaming of
his own personal “Animal House” come September. I’m daydreaming,
too; not of going back to school myself, and not even of how we’ll transform
his bedroom into that study we’ve wanted. As my son trudges through his
senior year muttering about parents who insist he pick up his clothes, I’ve
been blind-sided by a deep yearning for adventure and change.
I left home in the Dark Ages, before online college applications
and before girls could wear jeans to class. Like every self-absorbed
freshman, my parents’ life
became irrelevant the instant I left. Their routine stayed as it had been.
They worked, saw friends and traveled. They rested a lot. And as the years
passed,
they rested more. My mother and father lived in the same house until they died,
and after tough childhoods they were grateful for the time and money to enjoy
themselves.
I thought I was the adventurous one, up for anything, like a dandelion
on the breeze. Now I see that same restlessness in my son’s eyes. He loves us
and respects us; that I know. But I also know that to leave he needs to recast
us as the pitiable bores we obviously are, hopelessly out of touch, completely
out of his loop. I know that, as Mark Twain observed, our children may think
us idiots now, but in a few years we’ll suddenly become much wiser.
Still, the questions nag. When the kids leave, is the best part
of my life over? What challenges, what adventures are left to me?
I’ve
loved being a mother, loved being part of our noisy, silly
family. Although my daughter will be around for another few years,
our household will change when my son leaves. And at
age 50, already friends have died. So as my son gets ready to break camp, I
recognize this last stretch before decrepitude sets in as a tremendous gift
of time.
I want my own adventures. I want to do something worthwhile, something
interesting. I don’t want to spend my remaining years doing the same thing, only gradually
less of it. So I’m checking out the Peace Corps and the Senior Corps. I
daydream about hiking the John Muir Trail. I intend to finish a play I’ve
been noodling with. I think about a career change, about a volunteer job that
makes a difference, about selling the house, living abroad again and really
learning Spanish.
“Kids,”
I want to shout, “your father and I are not boring. We’re
not old fogeys yet.” But the reality is that at least for
a while we’ll keep doing the same things. There’s college
tuition to pay, 401(k) contributions to make; and, as always, there’s
yard work.
Maybe this is how it happens. A
little while becomes a longer while. You get comfortable. After
so many years of juggling carpools,
work deadlines
and soccer
games, you throw away the alarm clock, linger over coffee and ride a gentle
tide that carries you from afternoon walks on the beach to dinner with friends,
and
you’re happy. Maybe this is what my parents understood, that the real
adventure is just to let it happen. 
Molly Selvin is an editorial writer at the
L.A. Times. |
