Dragging My Feet Trying to Slow the Circles Down

Phinny is still in bed. I have no idea how late he was up hanging with friends for the last time in the easy shelter of their high school lives, but today this close-knit group will continue dispersing to faraway cities and states. Baltimore, San Diego, Montreal, Maine.

We are taking Phinny to Trinity College in Hartford. It’s a day we’ve been anticipating since he started school 13 years ago. The one we are in no way ready for.

I can just about remember back to my first day of college orientation in the fall of 1982. With the car packed for the drive to New Jersey, my mother called, “Schatzi! Let’s go!”

“You are not taking the dog!” I shouted.

“Well, what are we supposed to do?” she said, “Leave her here?”

“Yes!”

And there it was, our last fight for a long while, this one over our yappy miniature Schnauzer that my sister and I called “Shitzy.” I remember my anger that, only now, I realize must have come from a deeper place of anxiousness over starting college. Still, I was pissed.

“It’s not okay to bring a dog to the dorm,” I shouted, “and then to a reception at the president’s house.”

“You’re making a big deal out of nothing,” my mother insisted and hurried Shitzy into the car.

Last night I texted Phinny: Don’t stay out too late. Big day tomorrow.

Dad said I can stay out as late as I want, he texted back.

I let it go, determined not to have a Shitzy moment, not on his final night without the pressures and responsibilities that these next years will bring. And while I can’t remember my own last carefree night with my high school friends 35 years ago, I remember when I came back at Thanksgiving that I felt like our house had shrunk.

Most likely that emerged from my skewed perspective of living in a large dorm, but also the sense of my world expanding. Before going to college, I had hardly spent more than a few weeks away from my hometown. I knew almost no non-Catholics and wore a lot of knee-length plaid skirts.

But there I was, meeting my new roommate, Allison, who appeared for orientation in very non-Catholic leopard skin bikini shorts that made my father’s eye pop.

Her boyfriend slept over a few nights, and pretty quickly—even before starting classes—this sheltered young coed learned a lot about life. On the second week when Allison was up jumping rope at 6 a.m., I suggested that we might consider a different living situation, with more compatible people. She darted out of the room to go knock on the door of Sid Vicious, a girl whose roommate had never showed up. They made a good pair.

For the next two years I roomed with Weynabeba, a gorgeous, 4″10″ Ethiopian girl from Geneva that everyone called Baby Weyn.

She spoke 5 languages, and let me borrow her Benetton sweaters. Sometimes on Friday afternoons, we’d sit in the room smoking thin clove cigarettes she called bidis, and I’d feel like I had entered another world. I had.

And now it’s my son’s turn to find his people, his academic path, his footing on the soccer field. It’s time for his world to expand and for our house to shrink. Please no wild first roommates though.

It’s all as it should be, I suppose, but I never would have predicted this feeling of being gutted. Though you propel your child toward it for so many years, (get good grades, get into college), you suddenly want to, as Joni Mitchell sings, drag your feet and slow the circles down.

You can’t take it, the hollow space in your chest, and time rushing through like a strong wind.

When I go in to wake up Phinny, I look around at his room weeded of his life. I try to determine which books and treasures he’s chosen to bring, as if picking memories that could capture something of these years that he’s loved so much. That we’ve loved so much.

Finally I lean over and tousle his hair, the way I’ve been doing since he was a baby. I try to swallow all of my sadness. “Time to get ready,” I say.

                        *****

His dorm hallways echo. It’s athlete move-in day, so there’s no orientation energy and hype, just a few dozen fit-looking students with their parents dragging in armloads of stuff. We all smile warmly, but there’s not connection yet. His roommate won’t be there for another five days.

We sort out his bed and desk, then make a run to Target, a mile down the road from my childhood home in New Britain. We get him a rug, a wastebasket, and rainbow-colored junk food that I’ve never allowed in the house. He just throws boxes in the cart, clearly aware that I have no power to resist anything he asks for. Not today.

At the food counter I grab him some chicken alfredo. Since I forget to also grab a plastic fork, Phinny has to eat it using my rejected pizza crust as a scoop. Soon we are back in his room assembling and hammering. And then it’s time.

I feel this strange impulse to apologize to my boy for all of the things I didn’t teach him.

We did our best to get you ready, I want to say. I hope it was enough.

Even my parents did their best. In fact Schatzi, who ran yapping up and down the dorm hall on my college move-in day, ended up being a huge hit with all of the nervous new students. Which, in turn, gave me a boost of popularity.

But I don’t say anything to Phinny. I just watch as Mark hugs him and cries. When it’s my turn, I hold him tight.

Finally, Mark and I are preparing to leave through the heavy, institutional door, when Phinny says, “One more,” and pulls the two of us into a hug such as we have never had before. “Thank you,” he whispers.

And that’s when my heart breaks open.