~Barbara Kingsolver
As I hoofed my way across campus a couple of hours ago, I came upon a surrealistic scene. The Upper Quad -- which during normal class days is a sea of hustling humanity -- had been gussied up as a tranquil dining arena. Tables with white table cloths. Hot buffets. Student servers and bussers in uniforms. And most amazing of all, in a mixed company of students and parents, bottles of beer sitting on tables, or held in hand by standing and chattering parents. In my day -- says the old codger -- that scene would have been as likely as a kegger held in a Methodist church sanctuary.
But nowadays it's but another sign that freshman orientation is proceeding step by step through what seem to be an ever increasing number of steps. In-coming students have been trailing around after guides like baffled sheep for weeks now, plastic name tags hanging from chains around their neck. These al fresco dinners -- and indeed there will be more than one such dinner over the next five weeks before class begins -- are part of what seems to be a new chore for the University: weaning the parents away from their sons and daughters. Or at least sending the parents home with full stomachs as part of such an effort.
Some universities have actually had to shut their gates at some point, and order the parents to leave.
The whole process of starting a new school year arouses strong emotions -- both happy and a bit melancholy. They are emotions that I share to a degree, as I observe the scene, with the more directly affected parents and students. The students face the loss of the joys of childhood, along with the advent of the privileges of adulthood and the adventure of study at a major university; the parents, while feeling pride in their children's accomplishments, also must contemplate the prospect of emptier homes and diminished importance in their children's lives.
Several houses down the block, a recent high school graduate named G. is preparing to leave town in the next few days to begin his university studies in Manhattan. I met and became acquainted with G. three years ago this month, during an evening when many of the neighbors were getting acquainted with each other while watching the filming of The Details in and around my house (it opens September 7, by the way, in a theater near you!). We've bumped into each other a few times since then, just frequently enough for me to keep track of his progress through high school.
G. reminds me in many ways of myself at 18 -- in his personality, in his interests, in his approach to life. He's been in New York City a couple of times over the past two years, playing in invitational music competitions as part of his high school orchestra. It's been these visits, at least in part, that have lured him to the Big Apple for college. He approaches the start of this new phase of life, as he put it in a note to me today, "with cautious excitement." How precisely that phrase captures the exact way I myself felt the week before I headed down to California as a newly minted freshman!
I identify fully with G.'s combination of enthusiasm and nervousness, just as I identify with what I suspect are his parents' mixed feelings of pride and sadness. But birds gotta fly -- and birds' parents have to learn to live with empty nests.
And as my empathy is with G. in his endeavors, and with his parents in their undoubtedly conflicted feelings, it also goes out to the thousands of new Huskies who will be pouring onto the UW campus over the next few weeks, many of them accompanied by parents who are smiling broadly with pride, and at the same time hiding a certain moistness welling up in their eyes. It's all part of life -- always has been, always will be. Every door we pass through opens up a new room for us to explore, and causes us to leave behind an old room filled with poignant memories.
Welcome, Class of 2016, to what I guarantee will be one of the more exciting "new rooms" that you will encounter during your lives!
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