Where's Waldo? Where's that beanie headed?
MY BEANIE BABY DEPARTS
MY BEANIE BABY DEPARTS
Tomorrow, my firstborn, my son Nick, will move out of his cluttered, pungent-smelling teenage boy bedroom and into his Freshman dorm room at USC. I am trying to remain calm by keeping busy and not really letting the facts of this inevitable situation sink in yet.
I think pretty much every mother facing the departure of her first (and more frequently, it seems, ONLY) child goes through some pattern of emotional turmoil: recollecting the miraculous sensation of your child moving inside your belly, remembering the day the kid was born “like it was yesterday,” rifling through photos of his childhood -- either literally or mentally -- lamenting to anyone who will listen about how quickly the years have flown by... It’s helpful to commiserate with other parents facing the same scenario because nobody else really wants to hear your whining about how much you are going to miss your kid.
But, oh, how I am going to miss my kid, my Nick, my Beanie Baby. Anyone who knows Nick well will understand the “Beanie Baby” reference. Up until very recently, Nick wore a red and black checked beanie everywhere, every day, all the time. The SAME beanie... every day for over five years. (See previous post “My Beanie Baby” for further background, if you care to... ) So even though the beanie is no longer ever-present, Nick will always be My Beanie Baby in my heart.
When you send a child off to college, you hope to hell that you have done your best to prepare him for the bigger world out there. And you know you have not done enough. At least I know I haven’t. I have over-protected Nick and his sister Chloe. I have certainly over-indulged them (with a lot of help from my accomplice: their dad, my husband Gary). I have tried to give them the life I wish I could have had as a kid. Some of it has been for the best, some of it has probably served to keep my kids unprepared for “the real world.” But all that I did was done with an excess of love. I gave up an exciting career and innumerable dear friends in Los Angeles to move to Minnesota for Gary’s new job when Nick was an infant, all in an effort to give my boy the best life possible... I have poured my heart into both of my kids and have probably put too much of my energy into them - to the point that I am not sure who I am without them... so subtracting Nick from the equation is going to throw my life off balance for a time, no question about it.
It’s a parent’s job to raise kids and send them out into the world - but somehow when that time comes it’s still a shock. I hope I have helped my son establish enough of a sense of himself for him to forge his own path... without screwing things up before he even gets out of college. I barely held it together when I left my parents' nest and went off to UC Berkeley, too naive and unworldly to feel secure. I immediately fell into a pattern of heavy drinking to mask my self-consciousness. Nick is very much like me - so of course I worry. I guess only time will tell... but it’s now up to Nick to succeed or fail on his own. No Mom and Dad there to smooth his way or help him out of jams. I truly WANT him to move on to college and have an unforgettable, amazing time. The hour has come for me to let him go - but he’ll be forever tethered to my soul. I am not sure how ready I am for this transition, but I will do my best not to mortify him by falling apart when I finally walk out of his dorm room tomorrow. I’ll report back on how that goes...
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