Emptying the nest

I dropped my youngest child off at college this week. I had been denying to myself for about 18 years that this day would ever come, but time marches on – or rather, rolls over you like a Panzer division - and there I was.

While my wife had been a sobbing mess for the previous week, I had decided to be a man and be strong and not cry like some sort of blubbering fool. I mean, this was a good thing – the boy was embarking on a new adventure, going out to seize the world, and I was going to be able to pour milk on my cereal without worrying how much of his slobber was going to land on my Corn Flakes (never could stop him from drinking directly from the carton).

I held up pretty well throughout the day, cracking jokes and complaining about how much stuff he brought. Just before we left him, he unpacked his Bible and put it by his bed, because he reads from it every night after spending about eight hours of shooting people on his X-box (a slight contradiction, but who am I to question?). Well, that got to me a little bit, but I just pretended I was coming down with a cold, slipped him some cash, hugged him and headed out.

I was still ok when I got home, but later that night, a little bit before it was time for bed, the damn stupid dog did me in. For a long time Lucky has slept in the room with David every night, curling up on her doggie bed and lying still for so long we’ve come close to burying her twice. But this night, she was just lying there outside his door, waiting for him, and when I walked by she gave me the “shelter face” and I could almost hear a Sarah McClachlan song in the background, and, well, it was all too much.

I remember my mother crying when I went off to college, and I remember humoring her but thinking it was ridiculous that she should cry over that. I imagine she was looking down on me from Heaven laughing at my fool self that night.

Why is this so sad? I don’t know. I suppose I’ll get over it soon – I felt the same way when Allie went off for the first time, but eventually got used to it. I’m not sure poor Lucky is going to recover for quite some time, however.

I was at the track the other night and I saw a man with his younger daughter, pushing her on the swings, and I resisted the urge to go tell him, “Don’t get too attached to her. She’s gonna move out and break your heart someday.”

Well, all you can do is try hard to raise them right and make sure they grow up to be good human beings who won’t try to put you in a nursing home the first time you twist your ankle. I take solace in knowing that both my kids are much better people than I was at their age.

It does seem like yesterday – you’ll have to forgive me for my use of clichés – that I would come home from work and be met at the front door by a little fella holding a plastic baseball bat or a NERF football, waiting patiently for me to get changed so we could go out to the front yard and enjoy the rest of the remaining daylight. One day my wife told me that some boys had come and tried to get him to go play with them, but he told them no, he didn’t want to, he was waiting for his dad to come home and he’d rather play with him.

(I will pause here for a moment so you can wipe your eyes. I’ll do the same).

I can tell you that I never minded or turned down those play sessions. Even though I’m gonna need rotator cuff surgery eventually for all the deep passes I threw, it was worth it. I raised a fine young man, and some day he’ll have kids of his own (not too soon, son, if you’re reading this), and I can just about guarantee you he won’t say no when he’s asked to go play catch.