The College Game

In case you’re one of the few peo­ple not fol­low­ing Par­ent­hood, I’ll sum up last night’s episode. Had­die leaves for Cor­nell Col­lege (I am as­sum­ing it’s the NY one) and her par­ents bring her to the air­port. No one goes with her, which is strange­ly out of char­ac­ter. All the girl wants to do is get on with her life. She just wants to break free of the fa­mil­ial chains, and that pesky in­tru­sive DNA. She just wants to learn to be her­self. Then, sud­den­ly, she looks back, runs out of line and in­to her par­ents’ arms. Tears ev­ery­where.

I looked at my sob­bing hus­band and said, “What does it say about us that we are cry­ing more over a fic­tion­al char­ac­ter leav­ing for col­lege than we did our own kid?”

It must be in­stinc­tu­al, this need for the pre-col­lege-sum­mer-teen to hate ev­ery­thing about you. It isn’t pleas­ant and I ad­mit I cer­tain­ly didn’t han­dle it well. But, like mag­ic, in the end, af­ter all the hours of scream­ing and ten­sion and sad­ness, you re­al­ly are quite ec­stat­ic leav­ing them. Even if it’s in NYC.

There’s al­so this lit­tle game I knew he was play­ing, and I tried to be big about it, but the cord was so taut and the more I pulled for the land of my son, the worse it got. So when it fi­nal­ly broke some­where in So­ho, I had to step back for bal­ance, so I didn’t crum­ble off the curb and un­der a taxi’s wheels. This game of, On­ly Pay At­ten­tion to Your Dad, of on­ly text him, on­ly call him when you have a prob­lem. Even if it’s at 2 am and you don’t know where your moth­er put the tow­els in your dorm room ten hours ear­li­er. Don’t in­clude your moth­er. You hate your moth­er. She’s hor­rid. She’s done noth­ing but make your life a mis­er­able jour­ney to here. She em­bar­rass­es you. She treats you like a ba­by. She al­ways tells you to wash your face. Look at the way she freaked out with the black mold in the show­er. For God’s sake, it’s not as if they’re pay­ing $50,000 for me to go to NYU. Oh, wait.

Sud­den­ly, Dad is cool. He knows things. He’s right there with the right an­swers. I admit it hurts,  this fa­voritism game. And I won’t apol­o­gize that I han­dled it like a lit­tle girl. And I did. I car­ried this kid with his el­bow jammed on my cervix for months, birthed him, stayed home and raised him, had fab­u­lous birth­day par­ties, cheered him on through ten mil­lion lit­tle league games, sat with him for play re­hearsals and fol­lowed his dreams with him.

I made the lit­tle brat, I made that crum­my kid who he is, and he could have cared less. De­spon­dent, de­flat­ed and then slow­ly de­sen­si­tized, I on­ly re­al­ize now, a month lat­er, that I did win the game. That Cole, more than like­ly with­out re­al­iz­ing it, set me up to walk away from the Big Ap­ple and my first born with nary a tear. No run­ning nose. Noth­ing but a slap­py- sil­ly need to do cart­wheels down the ter­mi­nal.

So when he sends me things he’s writ­ten and calls me to chat, to just say “hey,” to share some news, I blink rapid­ly. Like this morn­ing when I walk on toes in­to the kitchen and re­al­ize he’s not up­stairs sleep­ing. I won’t wake him mak­ing cof­fee, be­cause he in thou­sands of miles away, in a dorm room. And from what I have learned as his new con­fi­dant, not alone.

When it’s hap­pen­ing, this break­ing away, peo­ple say, it’s nor­mal. De­tach­ment is a cru­el trick, a beau­ti­ful mech­a­nism pre­vent­ing you from com­plete col­lapse. It won't last forever. It just feels that way. Un­til that mo­ment when it all goes back to mom and son and the hap­py re­al­iza­tion that you cre­at­ed a very cool young man. And he knows it. And, re­al­ly, isn’t that what par­ent­hood is all about?