Friday, August 24, 2012

Daughter Departure

My life is about to get very quiet.
This weekend, Grace is still home. Tucker, a junior in high school, will stick around for a couple more years, but Grace leaves for college on Monday.
Mom and Dad have driven up from Florida and will spend the weekend here to see Grace before she heads off to New York.
We'll all jostle each other in this small house, enjoying the camaraderie and the constant sports on television that comes with a visit from my dad.
Then Earl's family, including preschooler Caroline and baby Regan, will visit on Sunday evening. Lots of family and visits this weekend.
On Monday morning, Earl and Grace will pull out of the driveway with her bicycle attached to the back of the car. And I will be alone.
Grace and I talk about our relationship. We love spending time together -- walking to get coffee, riding bikes, doing P90X, sitting on the couch and watching Toddlers and Tiaras. We talk about our problems and our triumphs. So I'll miss her a lot.
Here's where Grace will sleep in the sorority house.
But we also talked about the fact that we might start to get on each other's nerves if we didn't have this separation of months in school, if we instead spent all of our time together.
Grace and I are lucky that we've transitioned from the mother-child relationship to a grown up relationship. Sometimes I'm still too bossy, like a mother is, and sometimes she's petulant,
My quiet won't last forever though. Everyone will be home again at Thanksgiving, and there's always next summer when my house will be filled with kids, or grownups, again.

6 comments:

Mrs. Fry said...

Going through the same thing. Youngest was suppose to stay home, but at last minute decided living on campus was something she didn't want to give up, so there she is living back on campus.

Son moved out in July to live in his own apartment, and now my middle child, daughter is an only child for the first time in her life. Too bad she is too busy to enjoy the overindulgent, adoring center of our life she will become for the next three months. Lillian and I have the same relationship that you and Grace have. It is so nice when your daughters become your friends, but nicer still when you can still pull out the mother card and trump them ;-). I love my two girls a bunch. the youngest one and I have tea most afternoons, and I will miss that companionship.

Linda said...

Wow, is that 6 beds? That's a lot of roommates. I only had one while in college but shared the bathroom with two others.

Paulita said...

Brenda, It's nice to hear that other mothers and daughters are sharing these relationships too.
Linda, Yes, all the girls sleep in one room at the sorority house. It looks like something from Little Orphan Annie. Then they have "sitting rooms" for individuals below. It had something to do with prostitution laws and you couldn't have a bunch of women with individual rooms living in a house.

Mrs. Fry said...

Is it nice! Very nice.

judi said...

I'll be thinking of you. <3

Grace said...

Yeah there's still a law that says if only women reside in a house that isn't university funded it's considered a brothel if only one or two sleep in the same room. Don't ask me how that adds up

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