Going Blue

"Make sure you write."

Those were the parting words my mother said to me as I left the family station wagon and headed into my college dorm for the first time.

The moment was playing out perfectly:  All three of us sitting in the front seat of the car, my mother crying, looking me in the eye as if I were going off to war.  My father, focused forward, thinking of the traffic. And then that line which sticks in my head these 30-odd years later.

Even then it sounded strange to me.  It was 1985 after all, telephones were plentiful, although it was cheaper to make long distance calls after 11.  It was before cell phones and the ubiquity of connection, but our room had a phone, a push button one with a long cord so we could walk into the hall for privacy.   So asking me to write seemed, well excessive.

I told her I would call.

Now I am in the driver's seat, of the car at least.  But really of nothing else. We are sitting in the same spot preparing to drop off our own precious cargo into that same Ann Arbor dorm.

The child is going to exit the car, I will have no grand pronouncements about how to stay in touch ("Make sure you Snapchat me?") and our world will change.

Weeks before she leaves we feel the tectonic plates of our family shifting again.

Last year when the first one went off to college it was like the world's first earthquake, unsure if the ground would ever stop moving.  If we would ever regain our footing.  And then they return home, and there are those nights when you have the chance to set the house alarm and everyone is home and in their beds and the world feels safe and right.

And then they go back out and you settle into a routine, albeit altered.

Now a second shift is taking place, a week before she leaves and it's different.  Yes, we've been through it before, but every change is change, each child decides how they want to transition away.  Some with a whimper, some with a roar.

This child always had a flair for the dramatic. There will be tears.

She barks demands from the kitchen telling my wife to order another case of her fave beverage.  We look at each other knowing that we only need a few more cans. This isn't a fall into each other's arms and cry moment, it's simply a realization that the fridge will be a little less full of certain things and the next time someone will want that drink is Thanksgiving.

Because the biggest lesson we learned from child one to child two is that it's not about the dropping off, it's about the coming home to the undisturbed bedroom, the quieter house, the emptier space.

In her brother's first year away we felt connected, but in a different way.  It's weird not knowing their people, their universe, hearing names or seeing faces online, but rarely meeting them in person.

We learn about things that happened to him three months after the fact. He laughs about memories we don't share.

We stay connected through our own means, different with each child, each parent.

Years ago on a family vacation we were being shown to our room by a bellman who stopped to point out the location of the closest ice machine. My son and I looked at each other and laughed, finding it an odd point of interest as we walked between the sandy beaches and blue waters of the Caribbean.

Now whenever I travel, whether to London or Cleveland, I snap a picture of the closest ice machine and text it to him.  No words are passed, no response necessary, just a connection from the life before he left.

So that's what my mom meant.  In the mixed-up emotions of a time when my parents were on the cusp of their own empty-nest-hood, before I thought of them as people with lives outside of mine, they must have been wondering what their life would be like at the other end of that car ride.  She was asking me to stay connected to her, this family, that life.

We arrive home and say goodnight to one child, instead of three.  Our house is a Presidential Library to all the things they achieved in their first 18 years, their rooms museums to their school projects, the hallways are galleries of their artwork.

I check online for a posting to the world to see where she might be. There are more ways to stay connected, so many ways to watch them as we move from the center of their lives to the periphery.

But I do hope she calls.  Or writes.