From me, she had been pulling away for some time. I knew that her irritation was developmentally appropriate. It still hurt, but I knew that we could all look forward to some peace when she was safe at school. And all these words fail because there is no expressing how wondrous she is to me, as much so as when she first arrived in that Evanston hospital room.
The day of, there were some tears when she hugged her big sister goodbye on the sidewalk, but I had a Zoom scheduled during the ride down so Randy and Nora talked quietly in the front seat while I went to a work call. Nora did the driving through the cornfields.
Her dorm is a bland four story mid-century, retro-fitted with window air conditioning units. When I saw the signs welcoming students to the Global Crossroads Living and Learning Community and saw the beautiful student names on the dorm room doors, I had to smile at the beautiful place she had landed, but it wouldn't be until Nora's second day that she texted how suprised she was and how much she loved being in a super diverse dorm and how welcoming everyone was. She would send a pic of a map with pins where all the kids hailed from, with lots in India and China and one in Madagascar and northern Canada and California.
But that day, during drop-off day, her eyes were full of her new empty room, its closet, its possibilities. We only needed one trip up with the wood cart, easy-peasy. I whipped out the Clorex wipes and started on the top of the air conditioner and the desk until Nora asked me to please just stop, she couldn't right now. We were all happy to have an excuse to leave her tiny space and drive down the street to the cute coffee shop I had found during our first visit in the spring. I chatted up a friendly professor in the line, we ate our sandwiches, then drove by the mini-Target in the business strip near campus for conditioner.
We would circle around looking for parking, but once we were driving back in the direction of Nora's dorm, we bailed on the shopping trip.
There was only one thing left for us to do.
"I can get the conditioner by myself later," said my dear tiny daughter, my five foot seven cheerleader, my supporter of the cheer pyramid, my base, my lifter of small flyers, my love, my youngest grown to honorable womanhood, my wise young woman of our creation, my child, my baby.
We passed the Sigma Nu house on the way back. "Oh, they're the big partiers," I warned. "Stay away from the Sigmas!" There's a tiny block of green woods between her dorm and the quads. She may walk here, under these trees, on her way to Black History 1619-present or Gender and Sexuality in Greco-Roman Antiquity.
Back at the dorm, Randy and I got out of the car with Nora, but there was no more parent work that needed to be done in her room.
We decided to say goodbye in the front hall, we hugged and took pictures, and she was walking away, and she closed the door to the halls behind her, and I couldn't see her anymore, and my body started heaving. Randy and I walked outside without talking and sobs convulsed in my gut and moved up to my hard chest and out my choking throat.
The grief was beyond my control and so was my body which couldn't move toward the car but had to stumble over to a place beneath her window, down on the sidewalk beside the giant cottonwood tree where I searched above for the window holding my baby.
I wasn't sure which room was hers. I texted her a note to come to the window. She did, but first she snapped a pic of my wandering on the sidewalk, a glimpse of a woman on the brink of a new life. Like her, but also not.
She came to the window and waved at me. I waved back and it was all I needed. Now I could go.
