Making your Dash Count

Not about Sarah- A new year a new school August 24, 2006

I stop on the way to work to water the flowers planted at the base of Sarah’s tree. Westerville North will always be her school. I hope to plant flowers every year, so that Sarah’s memory can welcome new students to her “favorite place on earth.” I suppose it’s one way I have to nourish my daughter’s memory.

Her friends now have new schools and soon they will have new friends. Their houses are quieter as they start their new life, chapters away from their families, in college dorms.

Their parents notice how their home dynamics change without their teen. The phone doesn’t ring as often, the kitchen stays neat and there is always a car to drive. On the other hand, their built in errand runner and sibling chauffer has disappeared. Life is no longer as they knew it.

I’ve talked with some of these parents, who seem lost in this newfound solitude. I remember when my parents drove 700 miles to leave their oldest son in Bloomington, IN. My mother made his bed and then cried leaving campus. By the time I went to college, however, they had my older brother drive me down and drop me off at my dorm- anecdotal proof that it gets easier after the first.

But I do understand that solitude–  I just don’t know the phone calls that break it.

So good luck to all the new freshmen and their parents. Believe it or not, we ARE thinking of you and empathize with the new chapter in your life.