Empty nest and off to college and cleaning out bedrooms

In some ways I thought the day would never arrive when both children had launched out on their own for better or for worse. But that moment arrived for me late last night as my son boarded a plane from Portland to NYC to visit his sister and then travel to his college for four years in Upstate New York. It is far too soon to gauge my reaction to this event; what it isn't too soon to do, however, is to record some of my mingled feelings as I went through my children's rooms this morning as I was preparing to do a lot of loads of wash. Here are some of the things I found and thought.

Gaining a Perspective

It might be helpful to begin by talking briefly about our house and family history, at least for the past decade or so. The four of us left Kansas in Spring 1996 after I finished six years as a professor of history and government at Sterling College and my wife concluded a 5 1/2-year pastoral stint at First Presbyterian Church, Hutchinson. We returned to Oregon, where we had lived from 1982-1990, so that I could attend law school at Willamette University College of Law in Salem. This was a significant career change at 44; indeed, many people in our Central KS town commended me for my courage in taking up a radical change like this in the middle of my life's course.

What they didn't know (and I didn't tell them) was that ever since "Bob Dole for President" lawn signs sprouted up like sunflowers all over Central Kansas beginning late in 1995, I knew I needed to leave. It is not that I don't think Bob Dole honorable or didn't like him personally. Indeed, I had very pleasant conversations with him on more than one occasion, and he endorsed a book I wrote about a Sterling College student (Shawn Huff) who was named one of President Bush I's "1000 Points of Light." The "Dole for President" lawn signs, however, were just an indication for me that I was fully out-of-step with the things cherished by my neighbors and friends. Back to Oregon it was.

Our Salem Home

We decided to move to Salem, OR so that I could be near the law school. I left Central KS in August 1996 and my family followed six weeks later when they sold the house. We moved into a pleasant four-bedroom Cape Cod-style house, built in 1941, within easy walking distance of South Salem High School. We lived near the school so that the kids (our daughter was 14 and our son 9 at the time) wouldn't need to get cars during high school days. Of course, this plan went out the window in 1999 as we bought our daughter a Jetta for her 17th birthday. She graduated as co-Valedictorian of her HS class in 2000 and went off to the University of Oregon. The difficult days then came, as Judy and I, who had been married since 1977, divorced in 2001 and our son continued to live with me in the home. For three years I tried to commute to Portland for a legal job in a big firm, but the stress of the commute and single-parenting soon got the better of me, and I gave it up in 2003. Our son then graduated from SSHS in June 2005 with many honors and, just yesterday, he left for college.

What I Found in the Kid's "Suite"

The children had the upstairs of the house to themselves. It had two large bedrooms, with dormer windows, and a bathroom. Normally I went upstairs only "with an invitation," but today I decided to see how my son left the place. Thanks to his mother, who came over a few days ago to help him pack for college, the upstairs looked pretty presentable. But I couldn't help finding things and thinking things as I rummaged around there today.

The decade from 1995-2005 must have been the tee shirt and water-bottle decade, because I found them all over the place. A few of the shirts were nicely folded, but most of them, picked up at summer basketball camps or college bookstores around the country, were strewn about or, more likely, tucked down between a trunk and the wall or rumpled in the closet. The bottles were a different story. Most of them (now in the kitchen), with long straws attached to the hard plastic surface, fit awkwardly into 1950s-style cabinets made for traditional eight-inch high glasses. But I noticed what must have been a technological development in water bottles in that period. The newer ones, actually, weren't plastic but were a hard plexi-glass type of material, without straws. I wondered for a moment why we even had kept the old water bottles, but then that thought quickly passed out of my mind. The better question would have been, 'why do we keep most of the stuff we keep?

And then there were the odds and ends, from both kids. There were hangars galore, some with my daughter's name still on them. I found phone books from 2001/02, unused registration forms for the SAT in 2003, a penny, several packets of unopened notebook paper and 5 X 7 cards, and a photo of a high-school girl making a weird face. My daughter's medals and cords, which she proudly displayed around her neck during her high school graduation, were neatly piled in her closet; a video, entitled "Getting Started in Water Aerobics," which my son obtained when he suffered a patellar injury in 2004 while running, was lying on top of a water harness, which he never used, that was supposed to aid his "comeback" from the injury.

My daughter's little framed picture of "The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit" (a favorite painting of my ex), by Boston artist John Singer Sargent, was there; her baptismal banner, made by a Mariner's Group at Valley Community Presbyterian Church, with a simple felt rainbow, a cross and a dove descending, still hung from her closet door. My son's life-size cardboard cutout of Michael Jordan was standing in his room but, as an indication of how his athletic tastes had changed over time, old copies of Track and Field News were on the back of the commode. Abercrombie & Fitch carrying bags still held old sales receipts and track shoes that were destined for the recycle bin but had not yet gotten there.

After smiling several times at the memories that these articles recalled, another mood came over me, which I will describe in the next essay.

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