Determined to Stay, Mom Delivers Son to College

Mom on the Run

“OK,” my son says, looking around. “I guess that’s it. You can go now.”

What? My mouth falls open. “No way! We’re not done! We’re not leaving yet!” Shoot, we just finished setting up my son’s dorm room a few minutes ago. We haven’t even been here a full two hours yet, I don’t think. And he wants us to leave already?

Luckily, my husband and daughter seem as surprised as I am. “I thought we needed to go to a Target or a Walmart or something, and get stuff to hang up your hat rack?” My son made his own baseball cap rack just a few days ago, and we haven’t been able to get it to make it stay on the wall with the stick-on hooks we brought. They’re not adhering to the back of the rack, which crashed loudly down onto the dorm desk twice already.

“And we need a king-sized pillowcase,” I add. I had a selection of new pillows in the spare room at home, and when my son chose one he brought two, one regular size and one king-sized, for optimum dorm life comfort. Unfortunately, with his minimal understanding of bed linens, he didn’t realize that the pillowcases that came with his new college sheet sets wouldn’t fit both pillows.

“Plus,” I continue stubbornly, hands crossed in front of my chest, “we are staying for the welcome presentation. This is my day, my last day, and I am going to bask in it.” I straighten my back, lock my knees, lift my chin. This is not negotiable.

Behind me, there’s a small scuffing sound. I turn back and look at Sam, my son’s new roommate. Sam is the oldest child in his family, and his mom and dad looked genuinely appalled when I said no, no, no, we wouldn’t be staying all the way until dinnertime and the college Family Welcome Picnic tonight. This is my second child to deliver to college, and we know all about Family Welcome Picnics. Potato chips and platitudes. No, I explained to them, we would be heading home well before that.

But this is quite a bit earlier than “well before the Family Welcome Picnic,” and Sam is standing, leaning on his bed, watching us intently. He is dressed in a crisp yellow button-down oxford, long sleeves folded at the forearms. Sam moved into the shared room with a rack full of ties, a shiny new iron, and a tabletop ironing board. He went to an all-boys’ private high school and, I know, is going to be learning a lot from my son, with his baseball caps, stinky ice hockey gear, and affinity for generously wrinkled dress shirts.

Right now, Sam is absorbing, obviously learning an important new lesson. But what lesson? That his new roommate’s family is crazy, and needs to be shed as quickly as possible? That my son is a sociopath and doesn’t fully appreciate his loving parents and sister? Or, maybe, that his own parents spending the full weekend in town and attending every single welcome event isn’t the only way to go, and things will be very different when they leave his little brother at college in a few years?

I turn back around and face my son. In any case, no. I am firm about this. I am not driving more than two hours, spending 90 minutes putting clothes in the dresser and making the bed, then turning around and driving all the way back home. This is my youngest child, I’m delivering him to college, I’ll see him in a month at parents’ weekend but then not again until Thanksgiving, and I am not leaving yet. No way, no how.

My son looks at me, recognizes the expression on my face, and maybe he gets it too, because he softens visibly. “OK, OK,” he says, hands up defensively. “Fine. You don’t have to leave yet. I was just saying I’m ready. You can stay longer if you want to.” He looks at me steadily. “But yeah. Let’s go find the Target.”

I nod, having won one of my last battles. I shoulder my purse and move towards the door, leading the way.