So my baby girl is getting ready to go away to college. I mean REALLY away - like a nine hour drive or a $250 airplane ticket away. She will be in a different zip code, a different area code, heck, even a different climate than I am.
We should both be well prepared for this transition. Erin stayed at home with me for these extra two years (or is it three?) while she got her AA at Santa Fe College. No need to spend money on an apartment when her classes are about a mile and a half away from home. I have relished this time with her while I watched her friends go away to college and leave mom and home behind. I know it's been a gift of time and I have appreciated it.
I've tried to walk a careful line between being a caring and attentive mother and slowly letting her go. I backed off on giving her any kind of curfew and we compromised with a 10pm phone call if she was going to be late. (But that still didn't keep me from lying awake in bed until I heard her come through the front door.) When she is upset about something, I try to keep my mouth shut until she ASKS for help. After all, if she lived on a campus far away, she'd have to work these things out for herself. I never ever want to be a stifling mom, but I also don't want to leave her feeling abandoned either.
As she excitedly talks about the things she'll need and the activities she wants to get involved in at UNC, I am slowly getting my head around the idea that I will be living alone for the first time in my life. Ever. I've always had sisters, roommates, husband, and/or kids in my home with me and I've never spent more than 10 days in a row all by myself.
I look forward to lots of wonderful things about being alone. I can control the tv completely and not have to listen to "Dance Moms" or the latest Kardashian show. I can watch "My Cat From Hell" on the Animal Planet, or "The Property Brothers" on HGTV and no one will roll their eyes at me.
I can clean the house and it will STAY clean. I won't find a pile of eleven pairs of shoes, three sets of flip-flops, two pairs of boots boots, three purses, and five grocery sacks stacked right inside my front door, or face a pile of paint cans, paper, scissors, and glue left over from a camp project all over my dining room table - which will usually stay there for weeks until I complain about it enough.
I can do laundry whenever I want and not have to move a load of jeans, Victoria's Secret undies, or Starbucks aprons out of the washer first.
I will no longer find a leaning tower of dirty dishes in my sink. (Erin is especially skilled at balancing a variety of dishes in a precarious pyramid all the way up to the faucet. So close to the faucet that you can't fit your hand under the stream of water without moving a few glasses, bowls or plates.)
I won't have a steady stream of clean laundry spread out on my living room floor, where Erin sits cross-legged, watching tv while she folds her clothes. The only problem is that some pieces of the clean laundry always, ALWAYS stay behind on the living room floor for days and days until I finally pick them up and toss them on her bed.
My power bill will probably drop by half, if not more. Erin does more laundry than a family of five, and she is infamous for turning on lights all over the house and leaving them on. All of them. She can have the living room tv, her tv, her computer, and my computer on all at the same time and if I try to turn anything off, she says "I was watching that!"
Yeah, there are a lot of things I will look forward to. But I am gonna miss the girl. I am going to miss her blowing through the front door, tossing down her purse and keys, flopping down on the sofa and venting about some awful customer she served today, or something funny that happened in class. I am going to miss the wide variety of projects she takes on, from cooking to painting to jigsaw puzzles to plants. I am going to miss her laughing at me when I misunderstand the lyrics to a Beyoncé song. I am going to miss her help when I am trying to figure out how to reset the garbage disposal, or rearrange the plants on the patio.
I am just plain going to miss her. I am going to miss her energy, her scent, her noise, her voice. She is the kind of vibrant, energetic, and enthusiastic personality that can take all the oxygen out of the room when she walks in. She has a magnetism about her that can both enthrall me and exhaust me at the same time.
I know this will be an important time for her. She will grow into her own and start taking on more responsibility for herself. She will discover things about herself that will surprise, disappoint and/or thrill her. After all, there are things you can learn only when you are on your own in the world. I have no worries about her or her success. She can do almost anything she wants and make it work. I've never seen anyone with more determination than she has, when she really believes in something. She has more self-awareness and confidence in herself than I had at....well...more than I now have at 56 years of age.
This will be an important time for me, too. For the first time ever, I can direct all my nurturing and mothering energy and use it for myself - take care of myself in a way I've never been free to before. I will have the time and freedom to swim, walk, read, or even do my "Yoga for Fat People" dvd without worrying about anyone walking in on me. And I will probably discover things about myself that have been completely overshadowed by the kids, finances, worries, noise, and responsibilities I've juggled for the past 28 years.
So, here we go. The Two E's will be turned loose on the world in a way we've never seen before. It might turn into quite a wild ride for everyone. I know we'll have fun, and grow, and learn things, and be scared by things, but we'll make the best of it, as strong women always do.
But I am still gonna miss the girl.
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