Two weeks’ notice

VIEWPOINT

By RALPH HARDIN

Evening Times Editor

No, don’t worry … I’m not going anywhere. Or, if you’re not a fan of my work, I guess I should say, sorry, I’m not going anywhere.

However, change is in the air for me and my family. Tomorrow is August 1st, which means it’s exactly two weeks until my daughter – my baby girl, my last kid left at home – leaves for college, all the way across the state at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.

And I’m not alone. Thanks to these fancy new school calendars everyone seems to be running nowadays, the grade-schoolers are already beginning the new school year, but college classes are still a few weeks away, so we’ve got a little more time left with our college-bound sons and daughters.

But before you know it, the population of Crittenden County will drop by a few dozen as the Class of 2024 spreads its wings and these young men and women will take that next big step into the world of adulthood and be on their own for the first time.

So, two weeks to go … what do we do? Well, we’ll have to spend some of that time packing. There has been a steady stream of boxes arriving pretty much daily for the past few weeks. It’s like Christmas in July, only it’s all college stuff, like a mini-fridge, a desk lamp, a shower caddy, an under-the-bed storage thingie, and a million other things that apparently the aspiring college degree seeker simply must have these days.

Oh, and the Great De-Cluttering of 2024 is in full swing. We moved into this house in December of 2019 and I don’t think my daughter has thrown anything away since the move, so her room still has all of her “teen girl” stuff, which includes all sorts of arts & crafts stuff, books and DVDs, the remnants of hobbies she was super passionate about for three weeks three years ago, and every pair of shoes she’s ever owned it seems.

As we sorted through her shoe arsenal the other day, asked her, “How many pairs of shoes do you think you will need to take to college?” I told her I had taken two pairs (sneakers and a pair of dress shoes), but that thanks to 32 years of marriage, I understood that it was a little different for the ladies.

She thought about it and said, probably four or five. I waited. She thought about it for a minute and noted that she would also probably need at least one pair of boots… oh and some shoes for church. And her running shoes. There were a few more different shoes she had not considered in her initial estimate, and by the time she was done, she was up to 16 pairs of shoes (wedges, heels, flats, a brown pair, a black pair, sandals, slippers, etc.).

“I don’t have room for 16 pairs of shoes!” she wailed, suddenly looking and sounding overwhelmed. And that was before we even got into what clothes she might need, but I was pretty sure the “five” rule I had used my freshman year (five shirts, five pairs of jeans, five pairs of underwear, five pairs of socks) was not going to work for her. And to be fair, I was just an hour from home at ASU in Jonesboro, not five hours away in beautiful, scenic Northwest Arkansas.

Maybe it’s because it has been so long since I started college way back in 1991 but I don’t remember it being this complicated.

In any event, over the next couple of weeks, I’m sure we’ll do a lot of our favorite activities “one last time,” (as I keep saying it, like she’s going off on a mission to Mars or something). We’ve got a few of “our shows” that we need to finish. We have a couple of movies we want to go see. She’s babysitting her nephew (my grandson) for the summer and we’ve almost got him to figure out the whole walking thing. So, our schedule is pretty full.

My wife and I got a little taste of what it’s going to be like when she’s gone while my daughter was out of town over the weekend. One night, it was just the two of us sitting at the table eating dinner. It was quiet, with the Olympics playing on TV in the background. I looked at my wife and smiled and asked, “Well, are you ready to do this for the next 30 years?”

My wife, ever the optimist, quipped, “It probably won’t be that long.” I’m not sure what she meant by that, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t like it.

And I know it’s not the end of the world to see your last child move out. She’ll be back. In fact, she’ll be back Labor Day Weekend, probably with all of her dirty laundry (and probably to pick up that pair of shoes she realized she needs). I mean, the other kids still come back like all the time, eventually they started bringing someone with them.

And that’s how you get grandchildren, which is where I’ll be focusing most of my efforts going forward …