THINGS I’VE NEVER DONE BEFORE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I wasn’t going to write tonight as well, I’m feeling beyond sad and not too funny. But so many of you have written in and asked how it all went I feel obliged to continue what I started even though I would rather go hide under Taylor’s duvet and lock myself in her room and cry.

 

The move went really well. All my fretting about them kicking me out and not getting to finish and worrying about the size and quality of her dorm- all that was wasted energy, which is one of my specialties, the fine art of worrying about things that never happen.

 

The kids at Emerson made getting all the piles of stuff up to her room a snap. They have it down to a science, your car pulls up and all these beyond cheery, singing students pile everything into rolling bins and everything is in the room and out of the bins before you arrive.

 

In terms of a dorm room she really lucked out. She has a spacious room overlooking Boston Commons and beyond.  It was not in the decrepit shape I had been warned about, but was freshly painted and carpeted, with ample closets and drawers and two desks in front of the large windows.

She has a lovely roommate – a sweet Greek girl from Florida who is very family-oriented and down to earth, so blessedly she will not be spending her year sharing a room with Amy Winehouse’s younger sister.  She is tidy and studious with a sunny personality.

 

Having moved apartments twice in the last six months I have unpacking and organizing down to a science.  Considering I did twenty six hundred square feet in two days, half a room took me about two hours. Drawers were disinfected, lined and sacheted; clothes were hung in color coordination and her desk looks like a page from REAL SIMPLE.

The only glitch was I had two feather beds and no comforter but her roommate’s mother had to make a return visit to BED BATH AND BEYOND so she picked up one and all was well. The linens are still not to anyone’s satisfaction but Lucy and I will go to Bloomingdales this weekend and get it all sorted out.

 

So by the time we were done it was three and we sort of sat there and looked at the view and I rehearsed the next morning’s good-bye scene in my head and the impending one as Tay had to go to floor meeting at four and then had some other obligations for the rest of the night. Thus I was on my way to the hotel pulling one of her giant rolling suitcases filled with some of her excess clothing by three-fifty.

I got myself out of the building before I lost it – then I just sobbed my way down Boylston Street.  I must have been quite a sight, mascara all over my face, hair a mess, pulling the enormous bag – and then in true me fashion a store caught my eye. St John had this adorable jacket in the window.  It might not have been adorable but it diverted my attention and the store was open.  What were they doing open on Labor Day? What was I doing looking at a St. John jacket; I’ve never been in one of their stores, much less bought one of their items in my life. But at that moment it felt like the right thing to do, better then sobbing my way through the rest of the day.

So I went in. I must have looked like a hobo, pulling the suitcase in my packing clothes, make-up all over, but blessedly I was carrying my special edition Richard Prince Vuitton bag and Goyard for the extra stuff so if I was a hobo I was one who could perhaps pay retail.  The perfectly Nancy Regan dressed saleswoman took one look at me and instead of throwing me out asked if something was wrong.  I broke down and said I just left my daughter at college.

 

“Oh dear,” she said putting her arms around me.  “I just had a woman from Minnesota in here crying about the same thing.” And then I just stood there in the middle of St. John crying in this stranger’s arms.

“Would you like a glass of wine?” She offered.  “  I would.” I sniffled. And she disappeared and returned with a glass of Chablis.
“There, there; some wine and shopping and you will feel better in no time.”

How did she know me so well?  I had a few sips, explained I didn’t always look like this, and did she have the jacket in the window in a six?

Before you could say double knit she was back with some skirts and the jacket. And there I was in a store I don’t shop in, crying to woman I never laid eyes on, drinking a wine I never drink and buying clothing I had always disliked.

But the jacket was cute and Angelina Jolie had been their spokesperson so how old lady could it really be?

I gave her my credit card, well; I gave her my husband’s credit card, sat down, finished my Chablis that was already starting to give me reflux and by the time she returned with the wrapped up jacket I had somehow calmed down.

 

I then decided to be grown-up by way of further indulgence and I booked a massage before I got back to the hotel.  Some nice woman in Mephisto sandals smelling like ylang ylang rubbing my tension and sadness away seemed a healthier choice than the alternative; a bottle of  Malbec in the room feeling sorry for myself.   It was the smart decision and just as she was finishing my cell phone rang– Tay had decided to forgo an event and have dinner with Richard and Rachel Arlook and me AND spend one more night in the room at the hotel. Last minute reprieve!!!!

So we had a wonderful dinner at a restaurant Glenn and I had loved a few years ago. Rachel is a senior and can help Taylor learn the ropes and Richard and I talked business which reminded me I do have another life outside of clingy mother.

But the next morning did arrive – for me at four am and then I just watched her sleep, the ragings of my crazy mother having drifted yet again into the background of my emotional terrain. 

As I watched her sleep she kept morphing back into the two day old baby, the toddler asleep on the plane, the scared seven year-old about to start a new school, the thirteen year old trying to understand how best friends cans sometimes be anything but, the sixteen year old who was trying to figure out what these things called boys were really all about. So many stages, so many nights spent lying next to her trying to give both comfort and advice.  And there she/we were embarking on the next phase, a new morning with perhaps the biggest experience in our shared lives rising with the sun.

She stayed in bed as long as possible. I packed and repacked as to keep my neurosis at bay– I need to be active.

We got through breakfast, neither one able to eat much, discussing benign topics like oatmeal and Splenda versus oatmeal and brown sugar.

And then the moment I had rehearsed and rerehearsed in my heart and head for many years was there; I had to hug her good-bye, climb in a car and drive in one direction while she walked away in another.

It was everything I had thought it to be or perhaps I was so well rehearsed it didn’t have a chance for spontaneity.  We clung to each other in front of the Taj, we separated and ran back, we held hands, despite the fact all my friends said don’t let her see you cry – well sorry guys, I was sobbing, she was crying and it went on like that for what felt like seconds and days at once.

Eventually it had to stop, she had to get to a meeting, and I had a plane to catch.  A situation that will be replayed hundreds of times from here on in.  Though sometimes I will have a meeting to get to and she will have a train to catch. I will have a family to return to, she will have a boyfriend waiting at an airport.  But for the time being there will be long weekends, grand winter trips, followed by months of summer and the process will have a rhythm that allows us to adjust.

The plane ride home was not as bad as I thought it would be.  I thought oh, OK so the hard part is over – then I got home. And it hit me in the face with such a thump, her empty room, her cereal in the cupboard, her scent in the coat closet, but all left behind, the owner was up in Boston having a difficult time of her own.  Her first day of being what felt like alone and in one way was, it was her first day in a place where her keepers were not.  Those keepers that had seemed like such a pain in the ass for so long all of a sudden were deeply missed.

Just as I missed having the cereal on the counter with its contents scattered all over the place, one of those niggly things that drove me mad, instead of having the box siting neatly and unopened on the back of the shelf.

Dinner with three and not four, no cherry tomatoes on the table as there was no one there to eat them.  Dessert time came and went without her running to the kitchen for the container of dark chocolate she and I shared nightly.

Bedtime came and went without the sounds of her music, ringing phone and laughter and sometimes fights about her freedom – which she now had.

Was it hard?  You bet it was and those of you who have been there know the feeling.   Thank god some of you called me last night as that part was worse than the mental dry runs, that part left a pit inside like I’d never known.

But I will get used to it or so I’m told and then just as I do she will be back and the cereal will be out and the noise will be there though it may drive me nuttier now that I have lived without it.  And the phone will ring and her clothes will be on the floor and we will live a version of what we once did only for finite periods of time.  And then there will be a train to catch and friend to meet and that will be our life – at least for now.