"How are you doing?"
When a simple question doesn't have a quick answer.
So many people have reached out in the past week or so to ask, “how are you doing?”
Each time, I am grateful.
Each time, I have no idea how to answer, exactly.
Do you mean how am I doing generally? Do you mean how are things at home? How did things go with college drop-off? How did things go with the new NYC high school freshman? How are you easing back into September? How was your birthday? How are you holding up while drinking your weight in electrolyte packets in this insufferable heat?
Or wait…maybe it was just your way of saying hi.
The truth is, the answer is not what you might be expecting after weeks and months of so much shaky ground, major change, and emotional ups and downs.
“Pretty good, actually. Yeah…pretty good.”
1. The Bins
We could not have possibly fit three adult humans in the car along with all the bins with all the stuff. So much stuff! Not too much stuff though. “Did I overpack, Mom? It seems like a lot of stuff” — just the right amount for starting a new life chapter.
“I have so many sweaters!” She had maybe 6 sweaters and a bunch of sweatshirts. I still remember a girl in my freshman dorm bragging that she had over 120 sweaters. So no, not too many sweaters.
Not too many shoes. Not too many sewing machine accessories or favorite paperbacks, not too many wall posters or Target bedding sets, not too many twinkle lights or Costco-sized snacks, not too much anything.
Except people.
Except people and the dress form from her grandmother.
One person and one dress form would need to make it to Boston another way.
“How are you doing with packing? Can I help with anything?”
“I got this, Mom.”
2. The Drive
When Jon finally gave in and folded down the other half of the back seat to make room, we knew he wasn’t stepping foot into that car with us. He offered to race to catch the next Amtrak to Boston though, and that meant the world.
With a brief stop at Starbucks (“yes, I’ll pay for it.”) Thalia and I alone headed toward the Downtown Brooklyn on-ramp for the BQE. Just the two of us. Me and my new adult for five hours. Me and the human who made me a mother and changed my life forever. Me and my first-born, talking and listening and staring out the window and sometimes not talking at all.
I tried not to ask too many questions; when I’m anxious, I find it difficult not to fill the quiet spaces. She had things to think about. Or not think about. I couldn’t say.
Then the playlist came out.
Ask your kid to share their favorite playlist with you on a drive sometime if they’re willing. It’s incredibly personal—a step away from sharing a diary entry. It’s revealing and connective, and hey, you like the Cure too? That’s a deep cut there!
By mid-Connecticut, working our way up to the Mass Pike connection in Sturbridge, she lay her head against my right shoulder and closed her eyes.
I want to remember that.
“How are you doing…sleepy? It’s okay if you want to take a nap.
”I’m okay. I never nap”
3. The Move-In
It was hot, sticky, sweaty managed chaos, with all those bins and long pauses in front of near-useless giant floor fans and anxious families waiting by elevator banks. The moms were sweating off their makeup. The dads were pressing the elevator buttons multiple times because as we know, that always makes them come faster.
It’s fascinating to observe that dance between children and their parents at a profound moment of separation.
Some kids cling to their parents, intertwining fingers or clutching arms. Some kids swat away that adult hand reaching for their own. Some kids pick petty arguments. Some kids walk four feet ahead. Some kids hardly look up from the ground at all. Some parents pick petty arguments. Some kids say “mom! No pictures!” Some parents say, “you really brought too much stuff.”
No one brought too much stuff. That’s a thing you say when when you’re struggling with the notion that you may no longer be needed.
We all want to feel like we’re still needed.
We are still needed. Just not in the way our four-year-olds or 10 year-olds or 13 year-olds needed us.
“How are you doing? Hungry?”
”Starving!”
”Let’s go down to the dining hall, I think they’re letting parents in.”
”Cool. How does this swipe card work again? Actually…I’ll figure it out.”
4. The Dorm Room, Her Way
We are not the family who perfectly frames each same-sized piece of artwork for hanging, repaints walls, installs our own wall-to-wall carpet, or even purchases elegantly modern pushpins. We are not a bedskirt family. Which is fine because she is not a bedskirt kid.
She does have a bulletin board over her desk though, timeworn from decades of use, with traces of graffiti carrying the ghosts of so many freshmen loves and lives.
A college dorm wall is like a playlist — what’s there and what isn’t? What reminds them of home? Of friends? What makes them feel the most them? What helps them assert their identity within the confines a 3x4’ piece of grotty cork board?
You like that manga too? You were in Cabaret too? Oh hey, you’re into Kurt Vonnegut? Hilarious illustration, did you really draw that yourself? I have the same Funko Pop!
The bulletin board is not for Instagram and it’s not for a design magazine and it’s not for me or you.
I still wish I could show you hers. It’s amazing.
”How are you doing with your room? Is there anything you’re missing?”
”Nope! I’m good. Well, maybe one more trip to Target…”
5. The Goodbye
There’s supposed to be a big goodbye — the one big emotional, squeeze-them-tight goodbye in which you say the right thing as a parent and give them the perfect advice (but not too much advice!) and you all say your “I love you’s” and your “I’m just a phone call away.”
There was no big goodbye.
Maybe things were easier because of that?
The final hug was outside the Target just off campus, in the too-early darkness of the last night of August. It was a goodbye on a busy street corner, in a moment sandwiched between a lovely dinner with her wonderful new roommate, and the two of them racing up an escalator to find ice cube trays and hangers, extension cords and dry erase markers. And surely some things I know nothing about.
There was no time for tears or photos or sweet whispered words of encouragement and parental wisdom.
I cried a little walking back to the hotel with Jon. Maybe because I knew she was just fine.
“How are you doing, Liz?”
”She’s so ready.”
6. The First Week Away
Texting and FaceTime give the illusion of proximity.
It feels like she’s just at a sleepover for the weekend…just sharing a funny meme between classes a short subway ride away…checking in before coming home for dinner.
She’s not coming home for dinner, I realize, and those are the moments I feel it.
Not an emptiness and not a longing, like I expected—though I imagine those moments will come.
I think I’m pretty okay because I know she’s happy.
(Don’t we all just want the people we love to be happy?)
I want her to grow. I want her to be too busy to check in. I want her to have a life of her own, complete with friends I will never meet and experiences I will never know about, because that’s what it means to raise a child into a sentient, self-sufficient adult.
(Could you imagine if we were all still expected to check in with our parents every time we got home from a party or overslept through a meeting? Phew!)
I think the challenge is distinguishing between the want and the need. Those of the parents and those of the children. Sometimes they overlap, but not always and not always when we want them to.
“How are you doing? You get all the books and stuff you need?”
…
…
…
”Good.”
7. September. And Reset.
Maybe I’m not feeling things hard yet because It’s been a busy summer of what we call Musical Kids — like chairs, only…kids.
They’re all teens and they have their own lives. So some days three are with us but not four. Some days it’s two and some days it’s a different two.
Some days it’s the two youngest; those are the times we get a taste of what fall will look like and it’s pretty special. Different shoes in the front hallway. Different cereal requests on the grocery list. Different pasta shape preferences to memorize. Different school supply lists. Different morning alarm times.
All the change, the challenges, the happy mayhem—or you know, just regular mayhem—of early September keeps us busy, and for me, busy is a generally good way to be.
Quiet days can be restorative until they’re not.
So I’m throwing myself back into work, making the phone calls, visiting with my parents, catching up up with old friends who make me feel whole, and getting back in the habit of leisurely family dinners. I’m loving the alone time I get with each kid here and there, and the joy of knowing everyone just a little better each time—including the one born to me. I’m looking forward to every text update from Boston (a great teacher! A new ear piercing!), but not sitting by the phone either. I’m filling the family calendar with the important dates of four different schools in three different states. And I’m definitely spending far too much energy muttering about dirty placemats on the dining room table (as the kids will quickly attest), because still, in the un-busy moments, that’s what keeps me from worrying about what will be written on the blank pages of the next chapter of the story of our lives.
(And crap, I still have a dress form to mail don't I. And a few calls to make to the schools. A doctor’s visit to schedule, an overdue email that I’ve been putting off, a freelance project to finish, a meeting that really needs to happen sooner than later…)
Just when I needed to hear it, my friend
reminded me that sometimes we need to be “selfish as fuck” and take care of ourselves, and that sometimes “the universe grabs us by the arms and says, “BITCH, IT'S TIME. LOVE ON YOU.’”Let’s call it a plan.
I get a next chapter too.
“How are you doing?” I ask her.
“How are you doing?” my friends and family ask me.
“Pretty good!” is the answer.
And we both mean it.
Awwww, I loved this so much. She IS ready, and so are you.
I think when you’ve been dealing with a lot of trauma and then your kid gets to do something as “usual” and exciting as heading off to college—and they’re ready for it—it really changes the parental perspective on the event. I know when my oldest left it felt like all the other parents were sobbing and I couldn’t get that stupid grin off my face because OMG YOU MADE IT and GO LIVE IT UP, KID! That’s also when our relationship really started to change into something more egalitarian, too. (5/5, would watch my kid blossom again!)
Here’s to all the normality and everyday miracles. Your family is due.
Love the 9/11 Brooklyn rainbow. I hope that you find good ways to fill the quiet moments, especially because there will be more of them now. Remember there are always others that need you, just take a walk and you'll see them. You don't have to know them, hug them or even like them. Just be yourself and you will discover opportunities for sharing. Oh and if you want to challenge your perspective a bit, consider the next phase (four or more years from now) when graduation day comes. All the what now that comes with that. Life is a banquet of many years, just eat what's on your plate each day and remember to be silly sometimes.