Not Like the Good Old Days

The Teenager and I have, for the last couple of years, been visiting universities off and on in preparation for the Big Decision About College.  At this point, we have been on six campuses. As we tour these esteemed institutions of higher education, I'm realizing that some things will never change about college campuses, while other things have changed dramatically. 

Parking, for example, seems to be a perennial challenge.  When the Teenager and I drove up to visit a fine university in the Land of Brats, Cheese and Beer, we drove around for almost an hour looking for a place to park so that we could go on our campus tour.  When I finally found a spot, it had a three hour time limit and I had to go beg for quarters from the campus police station, which was right across the street.  The coffee shop next door had a big sign that said "WE DO NOT HAVE QUARTERS SO DON'T BOTHER ASKING", so I'm assuming that I wasn't the only visitor who came unprepared.

We ended up being gone a lot longer than three hours, but fortunately when I came back, my car had not been ticketed.  That was truly my lucky day.  When I was in college, the campus police were quite generous with dispensing parking tickets to both students and unsuspecting visitors.

Every campus seems to feature a gorgeous recreation center, complete with rock climbing wall, swimming pool, a large number of treadmills, and exercise classes galore.  All of this, of course, is free.  Free for the students, that is.  On one of the tours I could hear another parent muttering something about how she'd be paying for it but she couldn't use it, and the kid better get her into a really nice retirement home when the time came.

Ok, I admit it, that was actually me. 

When I was a college student, our recreation center was a dirt track, or you could wake up really early and go swim laps at the campus natatorium before they started using the pool for PE classes.  Why do college students need a fancy recreation center, anyway?  What's wrong with riding a bike around campus on your way to class?

Most of the dorms come with a small refrigerator, and you can bring a microwave if you want to. No having to hide your contraband hot pot from the RA, or your roommate if her or she was the kind of person who would rat you out to the residence hall authorities.  Every campus has Wi-Fi, and free IT support. When I went to college, I had my own typewriter and I felt quite privileged.  Now, of course, you bring your laptop, but if something happens to it, no worries- computers seem to be everywhere.  Free, of course. 

I suspect at this point the Mom of No is starting to sound like the Mom of Cranky, or the Grandpa of No. 

At least, I thought, the cafeteria food is probably the same.  I do remember having choices: the King Ranch Casserole, Tuna Mystery Surprise, or cereal. That was why I needed the contraband hot pot; tomato soup, ramen noodles and a dozen Oreo cookies can be a great college student meal.

Apparently, however, even the food has gotten better. At one university, in America's heartland, we were invited to eat in one of the cafeterias after our tour.  I asked the student giving the tour if the food was okay,  and she looked shocked that I would even consider that it might not be entirely edible.  Our cafeteria food is great! she said.  We have a huge salad bar, and all kinds of food to pick from! And they did! You could have chicken fried steak, or vegetarian lasagna, or hamburgers, or unlimited salad, or ice cream, or chocolate cake, or all of the above. No wonder the students needed the recreation center, with a limitless dessert bar. 

Here are some things that have not changed: The student's laundry does not do itself.  Dorms (excuse me, residence halls) still smell vaguely like institutional-strength cleaner.  The textbooks are still horribly expensive, although one student tour guide mentioned that you could buy them cheaper on Amazon.  Pizza places are everywhere near campus. 

One more thing that probably hasn't changed: Mom, walking around, wondering to herself, when did I get old enough to have an almost- college student?

The Safety Rules

Over spring break, the Teenager and I planned and executed a mother-daughter road trip to visit some universities she is interested in attending.  We stopped and visited the Grandpa of No and ate his food for two days, then ventured out further.  It was a lot of fun; we had some bonding time and we got lost a couple of times, but we made it home safely.

One thing I have noticed about each of the six universities that we have visited is that, at some point along the campus tour, the student leading the group will stop and say something about campus security and how the university takes student safety seriously.  Then they'll go into the spiel about the campus security call boxes and the process through which a student can get an escort back to the dorm or a vehicle if they don't feel safe.  The safety measures are all pretty much the same.  If you are a student and need to get safely back to your car after that 2 AM library study session, they have you covered. 

I know the purpose of this stop on the tour: Don't worry, Mom and Dad. At (insert name of school), we have your young adult's safety covered. No worries here; time to move along now to the brand new biology building and the rec center which is free for students because you are paying for it with their student services fees!

The Teenager, however, seems to have given the subject of her safety a bit more comprehensive thought.  Before we hit the open road, we decided to eat lunch at a local burger place.  While we were waiting for our food to arrive, somehow the conversation got around to the topic of "The rules of safety when I go away to college". 

Don't worry, Mom, she told me.  I know the rules about college.  Bring your own drinks to parties.  If you walk away from your drink, throw it away when you come back and get another one, or use that nail polish that tells you if there's drugs in your drink.  If you go out with a guy, take his picture or a picture of his car before you leave on your date and text it to your friends so if something happens to you, your friends can tell the police who you were with.  And if he won't let you take his picture, then maybe you shouldn't go out with him. 

I have to admit, I was a bit impressed.  I was also hoping that those drinks she was referring to would be non-alcoholic ones, since she's nowhere near 21, and that by "party" what she was actually referring to was "going to the campus library to study quietly with people I know from class who are also serious about their academic success".

Am I getting a bit nervous about sending my daughter off to college? Yes.  Yes, I am. I am the Mom of I am Going to Text You Twelve Times Every Single Day.

I know, because I have been there myself, at some point in her young adulthood she will make an error in judgment.  We all do. I wish I hadn't done that.  I wish I had made a different choice. I wasn't thinking it through.  I can only hope that her mistakes aren't life changing ones, or, worse, life ending ones.  Our society seems to give young men who make bad mistakes a break (we don't want to ruin his future because of one mistake) while penalizing young women (she shouldn't have been drunk in the first place!) However, I'm nearly to the point where I have to cross my fingers and send her out into the world, hoping that her risk assessment skills are functional enough to keep her out of real trouble.

I also wonder what conversations the parents of young men about to go off to college are having with their sons.  Do you know that the conversations those of us with daughters are having seem to indicate that it is safer for them to assume that your sons are up to no good until proven otherwise? I know plenty of wonderful young men; I don't want to think that about your sons.

I can only hope that we are all having a similar conversation: Be responsible.  Be respectful of others, no matter their gender. Speak up when you see something going wrong for someone else. Don't take advantage of other people. And text your mother at least once a day, even if it's just to ask for pizza money. Studying hard will make you hungry. 

When I'm Rich

Recently, the Mom of No decided it was time to become the Mom of Eating Healthier, and I subscribed to a cooking magazine that promised healthy and tasty recipes that my entire family would enjoy.  After perusing the recipes in the first issue, I realized that these might be healthy recipes, but they were also the kind that often require trips to more than one grocery store.

Nevertheless, I decided that I would persevere, especially since I'd already acquired some of the ingredients at grocery store #1. The Son of Never Stops Eating and I started roaming the aisles of grocery store #2 looking for 9 oz. frozen artichoke hearts, and it was then that he decided it was time to initiate an intense philosophical discussion about wealth and what one could accomplish with it.

Son: Mom, would you like to be rich?
Me:  I'd like to have enough money so that I could take care of everyone I loved.
Son: But what would you buy?
Me:  I don't know, maybe a new car.
(I had a feeling this was a "teachable moment", but I was hyper focused on finding the artichoke hearts in the freezer- were they with the broccoli? The edamame? the French-cut green beans?)
Son: I'd like a giant tortoise for a pet.  When I get rich and have my own apartment, I'm going to have a pet giant tortoise.

I've told my kids that there are different kinds of rich and while we might not be rich in money we are rich in love for each other, or rich in friendships, or rich in the community that we've created for our family. When I'd tell the Teenager (who was then the Elementary School Student) this in response to questions about being rich, she'd usually roll her eyes and say "Mom, not that kind of rich. I mean the kind of rich where you can go on cruises every year".

Unless you're a parent trying to impart valuable life lessons about what should and should not be important, I suppose "rich" generally means money. Not just some money, but rooms full of money. Driving down the freeway tossing dollar bills out of cars money. 

Except, of course, for the Son of Never Stops Eating.  His definition of rich is apparently having enough money to have an apartment and a pet tortoise. I'm not actually sure that you can legally own a giant tortoise, or that  a landlord would agree to rent an apartment to someone who owned a pet giant tortoise, and I have no idea what would happen to the giant tortoise if it outlived its owner, which it would probably do since they live for a very long time.  The Mom of No is definitely the Mom of We Are Not Getting a Pet Tortoise.

Maybe he could be convinced to stick with hamsters. An apartment with a pet hamster seems like an achievable wealth-related goal, and we already own all the hamster-related equipment.

I decided to ask more questions, since we still hadn't located any frozen artichoke hearts (although by this time, we'd acquired some cookies we probably didn't need, and some potato salad; the healthy eating experiment was not really off to a promising start). Also, I was really curious as to what he considered "rich". 

Me: How much money do you think you need to be rich?
Son: Well, right now I have $50 in my change jar.
Me:  So, is that rich?
Son: No. I need $100. Then I'll be rich and I can go to the Lego store and buy anything I want!
Me: How do you plan to get rich?
Son: I haven't figured that out.  Mom, questions are closed. Can we go home now?

Since we were both done shopping, I opted to go with canned artichoke hearts instead of the frozen ones that apparently exist nowhere, and we left the grocery store.  It's all going in the crock pot, anyway. Canned, frozen, does it really matter?

Apparently, however, the conversation was not closed even if questions from Mom were. 

Son: Mom, are you rich?
Me:  I'm rich in love.
Son: But I can't have a pet tortoise, can I?
Me:  Ha ha, no. Good try, though.
Son: (deep sigh).

It's Getting Real

When talking about offspring, people often like to compare teenagers and toddlers. Toddlers, I've heard it said, are just really short teenagers.  The two developmental stages do have some similarities- both toddlers and teenagers can throw down some attitude.  Another similarity I've noticed is that, just like people offer advice (most of it unwanted) to new mothers, they also like to offer advice to parents whose kids are in the last two years of high school. 

The difference here is that, while when I was a new mother, the last thing I would have admitted to anyone except my own mother was that I had no idea what I was doing (my Mom Manual got lost in the mail, and I was working on no sleep and instinct), right now I'm definitely prepared to admit this: I have no clue. Fill me in. Tell me what the secrets are, because this process seems to be a lot more confusing than I remember it being way back in the olden days when I was the one in high school trying to get it figured out.

I've noticed that we are getting a lot more actual mail these days, and almost none of it is addressed to me. Most of it is from colleges, many that I've never heard of, with photos of happy glowing students, promises of stellar learning opportunities, and gorgeous campuses.  This collegiate propaganda is definitely lacking in the most important detail, from a Mom point of view: Just how much money do you want?

The college-related mail that is addressed to me consists of flyers informing me of all kinds of classes and workshops that, I'm promised, will give me the secrets to College Admissions Success, or Financial Aid Application Success, or Secrets to SAT Success For Your High School Student.  Apparently this process is difficult enough that I need to pay people to walk me through the many steps that will culminate in The Dad of No and I dropping off one new college freshman in front of a dorm on a campus somewhere and driving off, with the Son of Never Stops Eating sitting in the back seat of the car gleefully yelling "YAY, NO SISTER!". 

The other night I sat down in front of a computer to complete a calculator one college had provided on their website to give parents and prospective students an idea of what tuition might actually cost.  I had thought this would be a quick and simple process, but after hunting down paycheck stubs, the previous year's income tax forms, the mortgage paperwork for our house, and the Teenager's kindergarten report card, I was reduced to yelling "What exactly is it that you want from me?" while the other family members backed slowly out of the room and fled for their lives.

Actually, this whole process raises another question entirely.  Exactly how much of this college preparation and application process is my responsibility? How much Mom nagging is too much Mom nagging?  For example, how many times should I ask the Teenager if she knows the application deadline for the schools she's interested in, or should I just work under the assumption that this is her business and if she doesn't do anything about it and misses the deadline for her heart's desire schools, then she is just out of luck?

After all, as the Grandpa of No likes to remind me, there's always the Navy, or the local community college.

For quite awhile, this process has seemed theoretical.  For everything, there was still plenty of time. Now the Teenager is getting close to her senior year in high school, and that time known as "After Graduation" doesn't seem so theoretical anymore.  I recently looked at the school district's calendar for the 2017-2018 school year, and when I looked at the last day of school, I realized that will be her last day of high school.  So here it comes.  Bring it on.  Let the check writing (me) and the decision making (the Teenager) begin.

Backpack Cleanout

The other day, I cleaned out my hiking backpack.

I was on a work trip, and when I arrived at my hotel, I realized that the shopping gods had smiled upon me. Right across the street from the hotel was my favorite store of all time, REI.  To make it even better, I actually had a legitimate reason to go into REI: I needed a new hiking day pack. My old one was ripped, the elastic that held my water bottle in place was going bad, and for some reason it seemed to be getting heavier every time I went out on the trail. 

Two hours later, I sat on the bed in my hotel room with both my old and new backpacks, and prepared to move my stuff from the old backpack into the new. This was exciting stuff.

I'd had the old backpack for several years, and it had been some time since I'd actually sat down and cleaned it out.  As soon as I started unpacking it, I discovered why it had started to get so heavy.  The backpack was full of stuff I'd put in there and never gotten around to removing.

In addition to the usual stuff- binoculars, sunscreen, bug spray, and an extra hat, I found the following items: six baggies that had once held PBJ and now held nothing (I knew they were PBJ bags because of the residual PB), one desiccated orange, one shriveled up apple, one broken seashell,  a five dollar bill, a hand towel, an empty bottle of hand sanitizer, a broken up granola bar, a small rock, a bunch of sand at the bottom, six bandannas, two quarters, a bunch of dried up hand wipes, a small notebook, four pens, a spoon, and several paper bags.

I tossed what needed to be tossed, put the $5 in my wallet, and put the rest of the unnecessary items in my suitcase. My new backpack felt considerably lighter when I put it on my back.  I kept asking myself, where did all that stuff come from?  I don't remember putting all that stuff in there. Obviously I did, planning on having a piece of fruit as a snack or thinking I'd throw away the baggies at the dumpster at the trailhead.  I just didn't realize how the weight of it all was adding up.

This is generally how my life is- I go about my daily business, collecting actual things, responsibilities, commitments, ideas, perceptions about life, beliefs, goals.  I never really stop to think about where I came by those things, or if I still need them, or if it's time to do a little cleanup and get rid of whatever I don't need or no longer use, or to consider whether some of my ideas, perceptions, beliefs or goals might be getting a little desiccated like that poor uneaten orange.

I thought about how this is the season of Lent, and although I'm not the most spiritually devout person on the planet, this is as good a time as any to do some mental, spiritual, and physical spring cleaning.  Maybe it's time to assess commitments and responsibilities, to see if I've acquired any in the last several years that need to be let go.  Maybe it's time to think about a long-held idea or belief, to consider if I still truly think that, or if it's just years of lazy habit and it's time to re-evaluate.  Some stuff will need to go.  Some stuff I'll definitely keep.

Maybe, from a practical point of view, it's time to finally tackle the overflowing box of assorted paperwork that resides in my sunroom.  It would feel great to get that taken care of.

When I returned home from my work trip, I took my new backpack on its inaugural journey on the trails.  For the first time in quite awhile, I was able to put my hand in my backpack and locate my binoculars without having to rummage through a lot of stuff to find them. A small success, but I'll take it; it's the first step in my 2017 spring cleaning. 

You're Grownups. Act Like It

The Mom of No has had enough.

No, not enough of the teenagers doing teenager things- I expect a certain amount of eye rolling and arguing from the teenagers in my household.  I'm assured by the pediatrician, other mothers of teenagers, high school teachers, books on parenting teenagers, the Grandfather of No, and practically everyone else who has anything whatsoever to do with teenagers that whining, eye rolling, sulky behavior, arguing with others and messy rooms are developmentally normal at this age.  I would be happier if certain individuals would be a bit more consistent with the deodorant, but generally, I'm good with the teenagers.

I'm annoyed with my elected officials.  The Mom of No is now the Constituent of Appalled and it has a lot to do with behavior.  In other words, you're grownups.  Now, act like it.

In recent weeks, I've seen a locally elected official come close to losing it on Facebook when challenged on a controversial local issue. I've seen a video of a state-level elected official losing his composure when a bunch of middle school kids asked a legitimate question. I've read about federal-level elected officials refusing to meet with constituents. 

Seriously, guys? This is your idea of leadership? If so, that is a sad story, because you're honestly not very good at it. 

Here's some insight.  I don't expect to agree with everything my elected officials do.  I don't expect to agree with every vote, or every position, or every philosophy.  Sometimes I think you are right on, and sometimes I think that you must have been hangry when you made that vote, or weren't paying attention because you were texting and voting, and sometimes I think that you are just flat out clueless on a certain issue. 

Here's what I do expect: to be treated and to see others treated with decency and respect by a mature, responsible individual who can handle disagreement in a diplomatic way and is willing to take ownership of his or her actions.   I know it's not easy to sustain that kind of performance, and I know we're all human- but you're a leader, and the burden of responsible behavior is greater for you. 

Sometimes, however, even leaders make mistakes. When you screw up and have to make an apology, this is how it's done: "I was wrong.  I apologize.  I assure you that I will take every step to ensure it does not happen again, and I recognize that my behavior was hurtful and inappropriate.".  You don't try to place blame on others, or cite that their views were aggravating you, or imply that your behavior was actually excusable because your cause is, in your opinion, righteous.  Here's advice straight from The Teenager: apologize, and don't do it again. 

Now you should be embarrassed, because a 16 year old knows how to make a better apology than you do.

If I'm talking to you directly, I don't want to be patronized, or have my questions ignored, or be given non-answers.  I'm assuming most people don't like this.  I'm a grownup.  I can handle it if you don't agree with me, or if you think I have misunderstood the issue, or if I'm flat out wrong about something.  I can handle it if we have different views.  I might not vote for you, but I promise not to have a hissy fit about it (at least not in public- I might make some snarky comments to my friends on Facebook). I have a right to know your positions on issues.  That's your job.  If it's complicated, explain why.  I have a kid in special education.  I can relate to complicated.

Right now, in this nation, there is a political divide the size of the Grand Canyon.  Bad behavior from the people elected to represent us doesn't help narrow that gap any; it only makes it worse. Please grow up and be the leaders we need you to be.