Wednesday, October 21, 2009

The clipboard list of hopes-College

Well 18 years ago with a swollen belly I planned for her college. When other pregnant mothers are flipping through paint chips and curtain fabric I loaded my clipboard and packed it with a list of dos and don't, likes and don't like, pros and cons. Among many other things, I imagined her search for college, how it would be paid for, and by whom. I encountered in my minds eye the nervousness of letting her go and hoped that she would milk more from the rooms of words and thoughts than I had. I hope she would only be distracted by the newness of it all and not by self doubt and maybe a little bit of hate. I hoped when I stood naked in the shower behind the veil of a world map curtain that she would know that all those continents could be hers to know. She would leap from one to the next, swallowing whole all of it. Keeping her body and mind free from the foolishness that makes knowing seem impossible or something that others do but not her.

She searches now through the catalog of colleges and sets her eyes to her dream. She writes her applications and files her paperwork. Her mom and dad taxi her to each school lovingly, without feeling distracted by a burden. They explore and evaluate, imagining a life there on a campus, in a dorm, at the desk in a class. It is exactly as I had hoped. There are no limits for her. She will become whom ever she wishes and the only burden is those imposed by the workload of an education. There is no struggle to getting to knowing if she can, how she can or will she do it. She knows and it will be done. The challenges will not be a mutant loathing it will be just the writing, the reading, the presentations, the stupid neighbor that talks too loud in the hall late at night or just thinking a professor is a knuckle head. The regular things, ordinary defining things that help us know that we bleed, that we ache and helps to lean back into the moments of complete contentment after they pass. This was my dream for her and it is so.

No comments:

Post a Comment