One Week Down

My time in Starbuck’s last Friday finally came to an end. After that the rest of my day was doing, doing, doing. Doing shopping at target; doing shopping at the grocery store; doing laundry (once Taylor was done with his). I even had to choose between doing the dishes or doing some maintenance like lip waxing and a pedicure. Sadly the dishes won.

Taylor packed up the car as his buddies were showing up for one last night of poker. Thankfully everything fit, or so we thought. Later that night we realized his guitar wasn’t in the car and there’s no way he could survive any length of time without his guitar. Seriously, folks. Not only that, but the rest of us couldn’t fit in our overnight bag, so thoroughly packed was the car. So he got up at 4:30 on Saturday morning, got ready to go and then transferred everything from the car to the truck.

Just as planned, we hit the road about 6:00 and stopped between 8:30 and 9:00 at Cracker Barrel. Sweet Mother of Pearl, it was wonderful. The coffee, the hashbrown casserole, the crispy bacon… it totally lived up to my expectations.

We get back in the car and everything is going fine until all of a sudden I start thinking.Yes, yes. I know better than that,  but I couldn’t help myself. “What if he doesn’t like his roommate?”, “What if he gets really homesick?”, “What if my lack of grooming embarrasses him?”.  Then I began to feel something. Nausea? Indigestion? No. A breaking heart. Dang! The whole “camp” delusion was messing with me. I, the self-proclaimed ice queen and mother whose children proclaim her to be soulless, wanted to cry! The battle between reality and fantasy raged in my head, but thankfully fantasy finally won out. Whew! Dodged that bullet for now!!

We finally made it to the campus, got him checked in and pulled up to his dorm. There were upper classmen there waiting to help move him in. What a great program that is! We didn’t have to carry anything up the bajillion flights of stairs. And check this out. Turns out that one of the guys who helped move Taylor in is the leader of the worship band they have there on Sunday nights! Taylor told him he had played either bass or guitar in his worship band for several years and the guy was definitely interested. So hopefully he’s going to get plugged in that way.

After running to Target and going out to dinner, we dropped him back off at his dorm and went back to the hotel. The next morning the school had a convocation for all the incoming Freshmen and that was kind of cool. A lot like a graduation, actually, but it’s neat to think it was the 108th time it had been done. The speaker was very good, but got a little too political, I felt, and she’s very liberal. My son is the polar opposite. It will be interesting to see what will happen if he ever has her for a class.

After the convocation was brunch with Taylor, a trip to the bookstore and then it was time to leave. I was in total “leaving him at camp” mode. I hugged him (and he hugged me back really hard), Todd hugged him, Katie hugged him, and then I hugged him again while Katie and Todd got in the truck. They were all sniffly – poor Katie was weepy for about an hour. The ride home was pretty quiet and much too long – we foolishly listened to the GPS again and she took us what felt like the slowest, most stop and go way possible. Now we know how not to go.

So he’s been at school for a week and he’s doing fine. Classes started on Thursday and he’s very happy with the 4.0 he’s been able to maintain for the whole of his college career. And we get to go visit him at camp in just about a month.