College Advice #2

Here I am again,

I don't think this is really college advice, I think it is advice for life. More like Mom's Musings..

Accumulate experiences instead of accumulating stuff. The experiences will be with you your entire life and won't make clutter in your life. Don't worry about having the coolest car, the latest tech gadget, the next best thing. Spend your energies on people and relationships and enjoying both of those things.

(An addendum: the stuff you do have shouldn't rule your life. Go through it every six months. Donate what you don't use and absolutely love)

Love you lots...

Mom

College Tip #1

My twin boys have been at college almost a week and a half. I can finally walk into their room without tearing up. That mystifies me, because more than once this summer I suggested they leave early for college. The relationship between mother and 18-year-old boy is a complicated one, filled with shrugs and non-communication on one end, and an expectation of complete conversation with an adult from the other. What was I thinking? They are fully into the pull-away stage, the stage where they exist completely separately from the woman who brought them into the world.

Then they go to class for the first time. That's when I got phone calls and conversation. And I was so happy to have it, to try and help with any anxiety. They have a lot ahead of them, some of it hard, some of it thrilling, all of it essential to growing into adulthood.

With time to reflect on the many ways I could have better handled the last year with them, it occurred to me there are countless things I should have told them, even if the response was a shrug and "gotta go mom." So, I have decided to parse out my little tidbits of advice as it comes to me, via e-mail.

Here is my first installment:
Hi guys,
An important tip.
In order to make sure you don't miss any of the million things professors want you to do/remember, pay attentio nto those syllabi. Spread them out and write down EVERYTHING in your planner. Include reading expectations, projects, quizzes, tests.

I have about a billion more things I forgot to tell you the last 18 years. (Yikes, almost 19!) So I guess I will be sending these quite often.

Love you,
Mom

Some real signs that your child is almost a teen-ager.
Mom
(Turns down car stereo)
"Tell me about junior high. Do you like it?"
12-year-old son
(Turns up car stereo)
Umm....
Mom
(Turns down car stereo)
"How did the math test go?"
12-year-old son
(Turns up car stereo)
"Wasn't a test. Just multiplication and stuff."
Slouches. Sticks feet on dashboard
Mom
(Turns down car stereo)
"Put your feet down. If we had an accident, the air bag would break your legs and you would be paralyzed."
12-year-old son
(Turns up car stero)
Audible sigh and eye roll

This from the kid who always has a lot to say about everything. At least I know the warning signs of impending teen behavior, having gone through it twice before. And I am not worried too much. I know it will go away in time, say a mere five or six, or even seven years from now, when my checkbook is very important, and even sometimes, my opinion.

In some cultures, grandparents living with a nuclear family is not too unusual. But it is for my community, and I venture to guess, for most of the United States. When I told people we were buying a bigger house so my parents could live with us, the reaction was familiar. Seventeen years ago when I decided to leave my career in television news and stay at home with my newborn twins, I got some of the same blank stares. Why would you want to give up a career or an established life to care for someone?

Because, for me, it is the right thing to do.

Notice, I did not say the easy thing to do. Because combining a household with three active boys, one demanding career (my husband's), one fledgling career (mine), two 80-something people and a needy golden retriever, takes some finesse, nerves of steel and a strong will to get through it.

Today I was struck by the irony of a couple of things. My 17-year-old twins are trying to figure out where to go to college, my 12-year-old is weighing the merits of two different junior high schools, and my parents want to look into where they should be buried. So, new beginnings for three people, the end for two others. I never really want to talk about burial plots, but as mom pointed out today, we shouldn't wait until "that day." It will be stressful and difficult then. She's right, so on my calendar next week, I will block out a couple hours to go shopping for a final resting place.

Living with people who have weathered 8 decades does give you a unique perspective. That life on earth doesn't last forever, for instance. Or that some things just aren't worth worrying about. That old-fashioned values are often the best kind of values. And that give and take as a family really does benefit everyone.