It's been a month since we took Cameron to college. I tried to write a blog about it soon after, but I was too caught up in my own worries and fears and her frustrations to get a clear picture. By the beginning of second semester I'm sure I will look back at this one month perspective and laugh, but here's the Allegheny update.
As we sat in the dining hall on move-in weekend at Allegheny College I looked at Cameron across the table and could not fight back the tears. It was more than just imagining driving away from my baby and leaving her at college, it was the end of an adventure that Jeff, Cameron and I had begun five years ago when we moved to New York City from Evergreen, Colorado. It was never just my struggles that I was reflecting on in my blog, it was how life in New York affected all of us. Now we were leaving Cameron to pursue her own adventures separate from us. For the past eighteen years I felt like her experiences were my own, if only by association, but now we would be two different people living our lives eight hours away from each other connected by phone calls and text.
This past summer when Cameron was getting her college physical the doctor asked her where she was going to school, without hesitation and with a smile she replied, "Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania." It was the first time that I had heard her answer that question without choking on the words. It was not her first choice of schools, but ultimately she decided that she was interested in what the school had to offer. It might have been easier to leave her if she had been thrilled to be there, but lukewarm made driving away all that much harder.
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| comfort food |
On her first Thursday I spoke to Cameron at noon. Her enthusiasm had fluctuated over the past four days from extreme highs to very low. The night before I had called and she texted back that she could not talk because she was going hiking with friends. She even sent a picture of a beautiful creek that they had discovered with a little flower emoji at the end of the sentence. I figured at eleven o'clock the next day coming out of environmental science class she should be feeling pretty good. Wrong. I tried to make light conversation to fill the dead cellphone air between us.. I asked how the food was. Bad question. I could hear her voice crack as she answered, "I'm certainly not going to gain the freshman fifteen because there is no food to eat. All I have is coffee. Mom, you know how I hate bees? Well, this morning I was walking to class eating the applesauce that we bought at Wal-Mart and a swarm of bees attacked my cup. I had to throw my breakfast away." I was sure the only thing keeping her from falling to the ground in a heap was because she was in the middle of campus. Of course I'm not worried that she will starve, but I imagined her frustration of not having the food that she is used to and the thought of long days ahead of cafeteria salad bars. Then she asked, "Mom, they say you should only be homesick for a week, but I still feel so lonely." I reminded her that it was only Thursday and I saw her on Sunday. She sighed.
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| Positive Attitude 101 |
One of the things that she had been looking forward to at Allegheny was their Outdoor Club. Her first outing was a fifteen mile canoe trip down French Creek. She said it was an amazing day, although fifteen miles is longer than you would think. Bald Eagles circled overhead, and she and her partner whiled away the hours singing. Great! But wait. A week later she made sure to get her name in for an overnight whitewater rafting trip. I anxiously awaited her call after the weekend adventure. When I asked her how it went she replied, "I could not have had a worse time." She explained that the group of kids that came on this trip were completely dismissive of the freshman and she was one of only two freshman on the trip." My heart sank. Then she added, "When I got back I was just going to stay in that night but some friends from the Edwards Dorm texted me and ask me to come over for tea and games. I had the best night at college so far."
You are seeing how this is going.
I have been through this with my two older children so you would think that I would be ahead of the curb dealing with this, but as we all know, each child is different. I told her that she had to make it through six weeks without coming home or us visiting. It would be her Mount Everest. After that every month we would see her for some break or holiday. We came up with a plan... she would create a sticky note pyramid on her wall. Each day she would write something positive that happened on the note and stick it to the wall. Day 19 would be the peak and the rest would be the slide down to fall break. At the end of that week she read several of the notes to me. She had kept her promise and written positive blurbs on each. At the end of the second week I asked her to read me some more notes and she said, "Oh, yeah, I don't have time to keep those going anymore, but I'm good!". I'd like to say that is the end of the story and the rest is cake, but any parent would know that that is a total lie.
She has a campus job working in the tech department for the theater and working in the Grounds for Change Coffee Shop, she says her classes are too easy, so she is planning on taking more challenging courses next semester (after Beacon High School college seems to be a breeze), she loves her roommate, and she has found a great group of friends with common interest and values. All in all she is doing very well. This morning she actually called me and I was the one having to tell her that I needed to get off the phone as she chirped away about a camping trip that she is planning for a stargazing expedition in the wilds of Pennsylvania this weekend.
Remember when they were babies and we worried about when they would walk and how many words were in their two year old vocabulary? Being the parent of a young adult is just as fraught with worries, but now all you can do is watch from afar and know in your heart that they have the tools to deal with both the good and the bad days.
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