 
|
||||
              
|
Tuesday, September 07, 1999 By Reg Henry
No doubt it says something about my taste, but I have always thought that the saddest words in all literature are contained in the final chapter of "The House at Pooh Corner":
"Christopher Robin was going away. Nobody knew why he was going; nobody knew where he was going .... But somehow or other everybody in the Forest felt that it was happening at last."
The transition from child to adult has many markers on the trail, but none so final and poignant as when a child leaves home for school.
Now, to be precise, I don't think Christopher Robin was going off to university when he left the Forest for the last time. He was probably headed for one of those notorious English boarding schools with the appalling food and poor central heating that build character.
So it is for the benefit of the Bureau of Strained Analogies that I stipulate that our Allison, who left for college this past weekend, is not Christopher Robin. Moreover, everybody knew why she was going and everybody knew where she was going.
They knew this because for weeks she and her friends have been consoling each other about the fact that their little group, which had gone through the thick and thin of high school life together, was now breaking up.
Because colleges do not all start together, they went off one by one, and each time there were farewells such as have not been seen since the parting of families beside the lifeboats on the Titanic.
The chorus wailed in a monsoon of tears: "It's Sarah's last night" -- or, "Dear Briana's going tomorrow" -- or, "Poor Deborah, we'll never see her again, well, at least until Thanksgiving."
Soon, tear ducts hung like saddle bags, and anxious parents feared that any more crying in the garden and the salt would kill the flowers and grass for at least the next generation.
Still, the parents would try to console their children without letting on that they thought that it was all rather ridiculous.
Finally, it was Allison's turn to go. She packed her stuff, then some more stuff, and then even more stuff for good measure. Explorers going on long safaris travel lighter than kids going to college. The trick is to pack every conceivable space without the family car actually starting to pop rivets. By the time she was done, there was hardly any space for her to sit.
After her brother gave her the traditional guy farewell -- "See ya!" -- she and my wife and I were off on the five-hour trip to upstate New York. We stayed in a motel and were at the college early next morning to sign in.
All the kids were milling about looking fresh-faced, and all the parents followed along suddenly feeling as old as the pharaohs. The registration process was very organized, and after about an hour of steady progress through the line, she had the key to her new life. Then began the process of putting the stuff in her room.
The room was only 15 feet by 10 feet, and with all her stuff, together with her roommate's bountiful stuff, the laws of physics and geometry would have to be suspended if they were to fit it all in. Other students had the same problem. Every few minutes another car, loaded to the bursting point, would pull up outside the dorm. Everywhere you looked, stuff.
Sad-faced dads would get the stuff and move the stuff inside. Then they would perform feats of ingenious carpentry to make shelves or rearrange beds. The mothers sorted and unpacked, becoming more morose by the minute.
In the meantime, the students were becoming happier and more relaxed, morning apprehension giving away to afternoon excitement. They had looked around the campus and noted that it was really an ivy-covered resort full of young people.
So they declared that their room, which had miraculously absorbed all their stuff, would be the official "cool room" of the dorm.
In the midst of their delight, the hour came at last for the parents to say goodbye to their little bear. The mother quickly put on her sunglasses, and the dad choked a little as he hugged her. And the happy daughter became the one to comfort her sad parents as they considered the stuff of life.
It comes full circle. They arrive as crying babies and we console them. They leave as smiling adults and they console us.
Reg Henry's e-mail address isrhenry@post-gazette.com.
|
|||
