To Kyle and our Athens...

I tried to tell him, but I knew...he would have to find it out for himself. The day we drove onto the campus, he said “I’m home, mom.” “This is it.” “I’ve found my college.” The magic of Ohio University in Athens, Ohio had already set in.

This place and time… engulfs you. You live and breathe the air, walk the cobblestones and trek the hills. The trees are wide and strong and canopy the College Green. The red brick that is consistent at each corner offers a strong steady presence. The pathways are looping…you travel them for hours, days, months and years, over and over again and never feel like you’re repeating yourself.

NO where on earth is place and person so equally connected. You know you’re somewhere special. You can’t quite define it. You can never really describe the feeling to anyone. Your friends, well, they go to other colleges, they wouldn’t understand.

He graduates next week from this magical place. He’ll return from time to time with the hope that same feeling comes back to his senses. But, he’ll realize this was a place and time that can never be matched. He'll know, that while he was there, this person and this place owned each other. There's a part of you that has to let it go. Those who are present live it. Those who return embrace it.

He’ll go back and find it waiting for him, always. Nothing ever changes, yet the people who leave are never the same.

His accomplishments at OU have been many. His friendship have been plentiful. His voice has soared. His happiness ever apparent.

And Ohio University is now his memory...and now he knows. He is so lucky to have experienced it for himself. And...away he goes...

Empty Nester - Glass Half Full

She envisioned a tearful women going from room to room, sitting on the edge of each bed, clutching old teddy bears and weeping for the ones she had just left at the gates of the higher educational facility.

A strange thing happened…she found herself sitting on the back patio with a glass of wine, reading a book and listening to her fountain.

A funny thing happened…Size 13’s aren’t left around like alien pods throughout the house. Wet towels aren’t left on the laundry room floor to become a science experiment. Pants with boxers aren’t in their strategic places for quick entry. Dirty clothes aren’t hidden behind the bathroom door so their mother won’t see them. Mac ‘n Cheese and Eggo Waffles have been replaced with the type of foods that won’t outlast a nuclear holocaust.

Suddenly…There is no one to fib about their whereabouts. No is one asking for gas money. Everyone who lives here now is out of bed before 1:00pm. There aren’t any more bodies in the basement. No more bottles hidden in the crawlspace.

Curiously…There is no one asking her…where is my charger, keys, sweatshirt, other shoe, what’s to eat, clean clothes or phone?

She’s calmer. She talks with her husband. She cooks for two. 

 She’s come to realize that the empty nester is satisfied in knowing that the boys that she left to find their own stuff are really good people. She’s gratified in knowing, that for all of their gross boy attributes, that she is immensely proud to know them and to call them her “people”.

Just like nothing was ever going to be same when she brought them home from the hospital, nothing was ever to be the same as she left them to shine, flourish and even flounder at college.

Throughout the day she passes by their rooms, doors are open, beds are made. Clothes are folded and closets are cleaned. Gratification comes in knowing that those creatures, who occupied those rooms, drew on the walls, stuffed clothes under their beds and created a musk like cave-like dwelling have in fact, made her life full-circle. Pride comes from knowing that they are out there happy, quirky and fun loving.

As she watches them walk away and find their way, they do so with a solid foundation,strong  family to lean on and a world of opportunities at their fingertips.

That is all an empty nester could ask for.