Daughter #1 Happy at Hogwarts
I'm back from taking our oldest off to college for the first time. Drove 11 hours straight and got home at 1:30 in the morning so when I woke up this morning I was not a pretty sight. I had bags under (and above?!) my eyes, bags like I have never seen before, weird, tiny, asymmetrical pockets of swollen tissue. And I didn't even cry as violently as I expected I would. But after I cry, I'm a mess. Other people cry and then they blow their nose and ten minutes later you'd never know. Me, I get this sleepy, puffy-eyed look, a headache, and dry, scratchy eyes to go with it, and I'm like that for a good 24 hours. Can't believe I lasted 11 hours behind the wheel with my eyes so tired after saying goodbye to her, but I was a woman on a mission, had to get home.
My daughter didn't take a lot to college, but she took all 7 of her tattered Harry Potter books. They're hardcover copies she's read over and over; they are her comfort things. Whenever she's sad or stressed, she rereads one. So it was funny when I thought I'd finally said my last goodbye (there were several; I left my cell phone in her room and had to go back up for it, then she forgot something she left in the car and called me...) and she called me again just as I was pulling out of the parking lot to tell me she was missing one of her Harry Potter books and she thought it was under the front seat. I pulled back in front of her dorm again and she came out to get it. As she was going back in through the open front doors of her dorm (being move-in day, everything was propped open), with the name of the dorm hanging down on a banner over her head, I beeped and she turned around, clutching her beloved book to her chest, and I snapped a lovely picture of her, smiling in the arched doorway. Her dorm is an old-fashioned ivy-covered brick building, one of the oldest on campus, with paned windows and a slate roof and bay windows and concrete turret-like things, and it occurred to me that it looks a little bit like Hogwarts. Maybe that's why she seems to feel so at home there. Her room is tiny and I thought she'd be disappointed in it's ancient windows and woodwork and plaster walls, but she 's thrilled with it, thinks it's the best dorm room she's ever seen. I'm so glad she's happy at Hogwarts! Now to gut her dungeon basement bedroom...
My daughter didn't take a lot to college, but she took all 7 of her tattered Harry Potter books. They're hardcover copies she's read over and over; they are her comfort things. Whenever she's sad or stressed, she rereads one. So it was funny when I thought I'd finally said my last goodbye (there were several; I left my cell phone in her room and had to go back up for it, then she forgot something she left in the car and called me...) and she called me again just as I was pulling out of the parking lot to tell me she was missing one of her Harry Potter books and she thought it was under the front seat. I pulled back in front of her dorm again and she came out to get it. As she was going back in through the open front doors of her dorm (being move-in day, everything was propped open), with the name of the dorm hanging down on a banner over her head, I beeped and she turned around, clutching her beloved book to her chest, and I snapped a lovely picture of her, smiling in the arched doorway. Her dorm is an old-fashioned ivy-covered brick building, one of the oldest on campus, with paned windows and a slate roof and bay windows and concrete turret-like things, and it occurred to me that it looks a little bit like Hogwarts. Maybe that's why she seems to feel so at home there. Her room is tiny and I thought she'd be disappointed in it's ancient windows and woodwork and plaster walls, but she 's thrilled with it, thinks it's the best dorm room she's ever seen. I'm so glad she's happy at Hogwarts! Now to gut her dungeon basement bedroom...