Things were done in a first-rate fashion. Milligan had students (and some faculty) there helping new arrivals unload their cars and carry things into their new rooms. On Saturday night they held a matriculation service in which the new students signed their names into the entering class of 2010. It was all very nice. This picture is from Mark Peacock's blog (it's linked on the right side of this blog. He's an excellent photographer and a good guy. Definitely worth your time to jump over to his blog.).
Here are the students preparing to enter the building for the matriculation service.
Now to the story of the arrival. We placed Meghan's things in their new places. I did what little heavy-ish lifting was needed, then I left pretty quickly. I didn't want to drag the moment out.
There are different kinds of sadness in life. There are the overwhelming kinds with a deep and painful permanence. They do such damage that they take a long time to assimilate into our new ways of being.
The sadness of dropping a child off at college is not that kind of sadness. It's a natural order sadness. You experience it with the full knowledge that it's the best thing that can happen. You experience it with the full knowledge that countless numbers of people have been through this. You also realize that at that very moment there are people with much worse circumstances.
All of that sure knowledge, though, doesn't relieve the moment of its difficulty. It may not be the worst pain you'll ever feel, but it's still your pain.
All that's just to say, I didn't linger. I went home and left the setting up of the room to Cindy and Meghan. I stopped at the grocery on the way home to pick up supplies and as I passed through the cookie dough aisle I saw the dough with the little Reese's Cups in it. They looked really good. I bought the dough, went home, and gobbled down a couple chunks of it.
Cindy got home later and I asked her if she was sad. "Yup," she said, "but I stopped by Sonic and got a Reese's Blast." We both laughed. On Sunday we told Meghan about it.
There are different kinds of sadness in life. There are the overwhelming kinds with a deep and painful permanence. They do such damage that they take a long time to assimilate into our new ways of being.
The sadness of dropping a child off at college is not that kind of sadness. It's a natural order sadness. You experience it with the full knowledge that it's the best thing that can happen. You experience it with the full knowledge that countless numbers of people have been through this. You also realize that at that very moment there are people with much worse circumstances.
All of that sure knowledge, though, doesn't relieve the moment of its difficulty. It may not be the worst pain you'll ever feel, but it's still your pain.
All that's just to say, I didn't linger. I went home and left the setting up of the room to Cindy and Meghan. I stopped at the grocery on the way home to pick up supplies and as I passed through the cookie dough aisle I saw the dough with the little Reese's Cups in it. They looked really good. I bought the dough, went home, and gobbled down a couple chunks of it.
Cindy got home later and I asked her if she was sad. "Yup," she said, "but I stopped by Sonic and got a Reese's Blast." We both laughed. On Sunday we told Meghan about it.
The story isn't over yet.
When Meghan got back to her room on Sunday evening, her new roommate was sad that her parents had left to return home (many states away from Tennessee). In her sadness she walked over to their new mini-fridge, opened it, and offered Meghan a Reese's Cup from a small pile of individually wrapped Reese's.
Who knew we would all be turning to chocolate and peanut butter? Some sadness needs counseling. Some sadness just needs two great tastes that taste great together.
1 comment:
Hey you got chocolate in my peanutbutter!!... Love to all the family
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