The school I had chosen to attend was about four hundred miles from home, so on the day I was to leave, my dad and I planned to leave early. He would drive me there, and then return home that night. In those days the expense of a hotel was not something our family would consider, especially with the cost of college looming. And Dad was too smart to stay in a dorm with a bunch of college boys.
As we were backing out of the drive way, my mom was standing there, in her terry cloth housecoat, waving goodbye and crying. I asked my dad, “Why is she crying? This is what she has wanted me to do for as long as I can remember. She wanted me to be the first in our family to go to college and I am doing that.” After a brief pause and a glance at me, Dad said, “You will understand it better in about twenty years.”
Twenty years later, almost to the day, my wife and daughters and I took our oldest to school, over five hundred miles from home. Everything went smoothly; we got her situated in her dorm and went out to the car to head home. As we pulled away from the campus, I had a flood of thoughts--our daughter was already engaged to be married the next summer—she will never be home again—my mom standing at the end of the drive way in her terrycloth robe, waving and crying.
I had to pull the car over because I could not see through the tears.
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