A funny thing happened on the way to the rest of my life (2024)

A college dorm room(Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images)

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A funny thing happened yesterday. I was at a presentation at my daughter's schoolwhen I suddenly realized something: I wasn't taking notes. There I was in a sleek auditorium with blond wood and acoustic panels. At every seat was a thoughtfully created armrest with a wide, flat surface that begged to have a pad balanced upon it. Slide after slide with helpful lists of advisors, department chairs and email addresses skidded by as my hand rested motionless at my side.

I had just dropped my daughter off for her first year of college. Finally, it hit me: This was her gig, not mine.

For years I had gone to every preschool, elementary, middle school and high school meeting. At every symposium on learning through play, every panel on teenage angst, every forum on how to build grit, I was there, all ears and taking copious notes along the way.

In an instant, I witnessed the culmination of all those years. TwentyAmazon boxes deposited in my daughter's dorm room and left scattered on the twin XL bed, my final deliverance. The mattress was wrapped in a strange institutional rubbery plastic sheath, but that wouldn't defeat me. I had carefully researched everything that would turn this environment into collegiate cottagecore: the right pastel teal LED desk lamp (with a bendy arm and three color settings), the fan that claimed to fill a hot shoebox of a room with soothing white noise and cooling breeze, the must-have shower caps for curly-hair that if washed too oftenwound up resembling something the Vikings wove into sweaters.

These were the details I self-medicated with during the lead-up to freshman move-in day. I moaned and groaned about the ridiculous minutiae with all my mom friends, but secretly I loved every video about 12 ways to decorate with fairy lights. My daughter wasn't into this decor stuff, but I was — and what better way to escape the harsh reality of my one and only child flying the coop and the harsh light it shined on every other aspect of my life?

I told my daughter — who was a bit anxious about her new adventure (where were those notes on grit?)—that college was like an island in a sea of being home. Did I honestly think so? Not really, but maybe it would minimize the hugeness of the moment, plus I liked thinking about it that way. It was better, at least, than thinking about the alternative. Being home would now be an island in the rest of her new and independent existence.

The fact of the matter is I'm a bit jealous. It began with the tours of verdant campuses, huffing and puffing (why is every college built on a hill?) as the sound of young a cappella voices echoed in my brain. I truly loved college. I mean, college was stressful, sometimes depressing and often a bit of a slog, but it was also the only time of my life when I was encouraged, nay mandated, to be a philosopher. And people actually wanted to listen.

I told my daughter that college was like an island in a sea of being home.

Now, I'm an empty nester with an as-yet unpublished novel in a marriage where we can finish each other's sentences. Not in that soulmate-y, romantic kind of way but rather in that we're-repeating-ourselves-a-lot kind of way.

Yet I still have philosophies. I do, and one is called "the rule of threes." You have a first impression, then an opposite second impression, then deeper knowledge just gets you back to your first impression. My husband thinks it's cool, but he's heard it a hundred times (and by the way, he thinks he's the one who invented it).

When my daughter was a newborn, I remember meeting parents with one-year-olds and thinking, "Whoa, a year old. That's big. Getting to that. For a mother. I can't imagine."

Now that my daughter's 18, I think, "Whoa, 18. That's big. Getting to that. For a mother. I'm old."

As a copywriter at an ad agency, I had a creative director who used to declare in his British accent — which gave everything added import and eloquence — that every ad campaign needed an "organizing principle" to connect the many print ads, radio spots and TV commercials. The phrase marked a very bright and shiny time in my early 30s when I was a career girl on the move, living single downtown and dating. It was a time when every presentation sparkled with the possibility of a glamorous TV shoot, and every first dinner with a guy could wind up with me wearing a pouffy white dress.

Today, I went on a walk with a friend. She turned to me and said, "I get how you're feeling. Even if she just came home and shut the door to her room, your daughter was the organizing principle of your day."

That expression. It had evolved from something that inspired me to try and create work that wowed an industryand won awards to words that represented my life as a perhapstoo fully-invested parent.

In that moment, however, I realized it had been good to have these organizing principles in my life. What would be the next set of goals and aspirations around which I would wrap my day? Suddenly, it was all up to me.

Plus, my daughter has discussed grad school. Whoa, grad school. That's big. Getting to that. For a mother. Are grad students too old to decorate with fairy lights?