EUGENE, Oregon – Me and motel rooms…
I am writing this from one of those non-descript inns that circle college campuses like wagon trains. The mini-fridge is making howling sounds, which is really nothing compared to what’s going on in my head right now.
“Go Ducks!” they like to say up here.
And so he did.
I don’t cry openly any more. Too old for that. I prefer to melt from the inside out, like a big Irish atomic reactor.
I mask any tension I’m feeling by snapping at the people I love unnecessarily, a little life trick I picked up from my late wife Posh.
“Dad’s very fragile right now,” my daughter Rapunzel explains.
All good, trust me. Smartacus is ready as a race car. I noticed his broadening shoulders the other day at home, as he stood at the sink washing dishes, and I thought, “Who is this man? And why did he suddenly decide to wash a dish?”
Go Ducks!
Now Smartacus has landed in this Utopia of green and yellow and orange. He’s the last of his friends to leave for college, so deep into September that the trees are turning.
O golden month! How high thy gold is heaped!
You remember fall, right? They do it pretty well up here – the entire town turning into a giant Halloween extravaganza. I like it here — more tractors than Teslas. Best of all, the rivers framed by the famously lush Oregon grass.
“So, so exciting,” one of the Chardonnay Moms texts Smartacus. “Go get ’em, honey!”
“Damn, I wish I was you right now,” I tell him.
For this, he is fully prepared. His shower kit contains Abercrombie & Fitch cologne and a boat load of Tums. Might’ve been some toothpaste in there, too, who knows.
His sisters handled many of the details. I just got him here, though there were a lot of preliminary steps to clear — tutors…teachers…test prep…applications…portals…passwords…fees…health records – and finally a five-figure fall tuition.
Once we arrived, with a carload of useless stuff, we had to immediately run out to buy more useless stuff, at the Store of Useless Stuff, a busy box container operation in nearby Springfield.
Top of the list? Sheets, which were ordered online and didn’t arrive on time. I suggested something with baseballs and footballs, or Bart Simpson.
Rapunzel snagged the last set of XL’s on the shelf, with what appears to be squiggles on them, some form of protozoa. A good look. The duvet cover is overly plump, a big Egyptian cotton trampoline.
Of course, the dorm mini-fridge they bought is too big (as predicted), and nobody from dorm operations “lofted” the bed (as requested).
Lofting is the equivalent of putting a bed up on stilts, so as to create useable space beneath — a critical maneuver to maximize dorm space.
Meanwhile, move-in day turned out to be a car-line catastrophe — the total frantic wad of chaos everybody had feared. The University of Oregon usually nails such logistical challenges, but they muffed the dorm-key distribution big time. Folks were 3-4 hours in the car line.
Many parents liked it, for it gave them a few bonus hours with the kids. But the kids were anxious, and there was a class picture pending. Some made the mad dash from cars to fetch their room keys in person. Eugene was barely big enough to contain all the angst.
Onward, you Little Einsteins! Go Ducks!
Two days later, everyone is pretty much moved in, and there’s a home football game tonight, in that spaceship stadium across the creek. Everything looks like a spaceship here. In many ways, this is the sportiest school in the nation.
Everyone’s a zombie till the Ducks win, and usually they win, at which point mayhem ensues. Good, joyous, raucous stuff. Cymbals and car horns…it’s almost Seussian. In one win, they celebrate all the good things they missed a year ago.
Sure enough, this fall term is fraught. The kids have been in near-isolation for 18 months, and now find themselves is this social whirlpool, a little gobsmacked by it all, many struggling to adjust.
The parents feel it too, having spent a lockdown year with them around the house.
Parents can’t help remembering holding their hand on the way to first grade, wondering how they’d do amid all the newness. Same feeling. Except now they’re pulling to let go.
The good news: Somewhere in this scrum of imperfect strangers are a handful of funny friends who will last Smartacus a lifetime. Sometimes, they change your life.
In Rapunzel’s case, she met a guy during freshman year – the rugby-playing rocket scientist. A dozen years later, on move-in day in Eugene, Oregon, he lifted Smartacus’ mini-fridge over his head like Zeus, as two stoners in a truck pulled in next to us and scooched our bumper.
See, you meet all kinds at a great university. Some brilliant, some ordinary, some somber, some kooky. And those are just the professors.
The undergrads are a pretty interesting bunch too.
And under a harvest moon, we now leave this freshman class, who grew too fast, too soon. We leave them with their precious phones, and their too new shoes. Our voices quaver, our eyes leak.
“Just my allergies,” I tell Smartacus.
“You don’t have allergies, Dad.”
“I do now,” I say.
We deposit them here, these sons and daughters of America, at the mercy of their dreams, their anxieties and their kind and open hearts.
Ouch, these thunderstorms of the soul.
Yet, how high thy gold is heaped.
Next: Wheels up, heading home.
Helen Hunt Jackson penned the lovely old poem “September,” from which “they gold is heaped” is borrowed here. I pretty much penned the rest. I mean, how do you sum up 18-years of parenting, with a kid who’s as much a sidekick as a son? Did the best I could. Damn allergies.
Good luck to Smarticus & damn if i didn’t catch your allergies too.
My sons did not take a last look at us parents because they had allergies as well !
Enjoy how clean your house will be and it seems like you never run out of TP
My heart aches a bit for you. In the next few weeks be good to yourself.
Straight to the heart. Smarticus with thrive, you will survive.
Welcome to Oregon! You’re on today, Chris:
“I mask any tension I’m feeling by snapping at the people I love unnecessarily, a little life trick I picked up from my late wife Posh.
“Dad’s very fragile right now,” my daughter Rapunzel explains.”
Brilliant. You and Smartacus will fit right in.
That space under the lofted bed– that’s for you, and we all know it.
My dead ex & I co-authored the song, “Legendary Hippies” when we worked at the Mental Health Clinic in Eugene (and lots of other songs, including perennial staff favorite, “Brain Police”, a lively dance tune). a sampler:
We moved out to the country, we went back to the land
Now planting seed and growing weed is how we use our hands
We barter with our neighbors, we never touch cold cash
But if you want some homegrown, I could trade you for some hash.
We’re the legendary hippies from Eugene, Oregon
We don’t like to work too much, we just like to have fun
When life is getting hectic and folks are losing hope
We keep a positive attitude ‘cuz we smoke lots of dope.
and so much more!
Does Smartacus know how to inhale? I worry about kids from gin-drinking families ; /
The backroads to Waldport are quite beautiful. . .
Well said. Feeling it too. Yes these kids were isolated and zooming school for a year and a half and then Shazam…off to college. (My daughter WhatsApps me often from Italy which helps my allergies.) “To raise a child who is comfortable enough to leave you means you’ve done your job. They are not ours to keep, but to teach how to soar on their own.” – anonymous
You did the best you could? Yeah I think you did better. Smartacus will be just fine at that wonderful college he picked. Now go be around people. Don’t sit in the house alone. It’s bad for allergies. And give White Fang a kiss. Dogs have allergies too.
Those same allergies will happen in 2 and five years over here. Hurry back to White Fang. You both need hugs!
What’s to add? You said it all. Beautifully, as always. Excuse me, my allergies are acting up too…..
Oh Oh All I wanna know.
Where does the time go!
Jerry Garcia – Uncle John’s Band
My heart is breaking for White Fang, no Zoom, phone calls or flying up to see Smartacus. 😢
He’ll be great living in Eugene (my sister lives there and I love visiting) and enjoying his new independent life. New airline Avelo flies out of Burbank to Eugene for only $39. o/w
you can commute on a monthly basis!!
And now….we wait….
Don’t worry Chris ~ he will be back soon enough ~ when my sonny boy came home for mid-semester break he brought his Hockey equipment bag ~ stuffed with laundry ! !
Do dogs have allergies? If so, how do they manifest them? I always thought that all the mist in the air up in Oregon was due to the anthemic rise of each new dawn, the earth’s moist response to another fluid beginning, an almost Druidic celebration of the evaporate lifting life ahead-(ie)-tears of joy. Meanwhile down south, an allergic patient awaits the return of his clinician. The medicine of the heart awaits all the imaginative histaminic therapies that will ensue. As for the allergist: physician heal thyself, which he most surely will. Such elegiac prose!
I suspect you’ll be good at talking to yourself. That’ll break up some of the silence. Play some of those videos where the Huskies start howling and see if White Fang will join in. Join Cameo and make videos for your adoring fans. Start a podcast and read these pieces to us. Can you sing? I mean if you’re Irish and you can’t sing, that’s sad. Just hum. Say excuse me out loud when you bump into things. Really throw yourself into it when you sneeze. Good luck, buddy. Who knew a fun night in the sack would end up ripping your heart out of your chest 18 years later.
A joy to read! Great, insightful writing. We just took all 3 of our kids to their respective California colleges. They are almost seniors! This, too, shall happen to Spartacus, so enjoy Oregon as often as you can.
Many years (25) we dropped our son off at UCSD. My job was to make up his bed. I was given all the sheets but needed to determine if he wanted his mattress stain (C**) side up or down. To say I became a legend with his roommates was not an overstatement. When we parted company both he and we did a happy dance. You will to. So dry those allergic eyes and Go Ducks!
My heart is aching for you. The too-quiet house, the full refrigerator, the silence at night when you don’t need to be listening for footsteps….
Interestingly, you *will* adjust. I sat in my daughter’s bedroom and held onto her pillow the first few days and then began to enjoy (?? is that a word??) the silence, the lack of obligations, the thinking ‘what do I want to do?’ – for the first time in many, many years – not having that question being in consideration of someone else. Me?? What do *I* want to do?? What a novel idea.
And then when Smartacus returns home – just as you’ve started getting used to the alone-ness – suddenly there will be noise, and confusion, and craziness, and mess….. and your thoughts will be “I’ve missed this so much/what the Hell is going on!” and you will know you’re on your way to this new life……
Wait, who do you love unnecessarily?
😉
It’s a good thing, those “allergy” tears, they let those kids know how much we love them!