Torn Between Two Places

This weekend my husband and I are going to visit our daughter at college to celebrate her birthday. I am excited to see her, to get out of town, and to leave work behind.

This trip has been planned for months, and, as I feared when I bought the tickets, my son isn’t going to come with us because of an important (for college recruiting) lacrosse tournament. I’m sorry to be missing that, but I got to see some great games last weekend, and he’s playing again after Thanksgiving.

What I am more disappointed about missing is his first real date! He got his license last weekend (!) and is taking his girlfriend to the movies. Literally. Driving to her house (1.25 miles away), driving to the movie theater (3 miles?), and then driving her home. Now, I know if I were home it would be anticlimactic–I might get a quick “bye” as he heads out the door–but I still wish I were going to be here.

I’m worried about the whole driving thing. And the whole parking thing (my daughter’s only accident was in a parking lot). And then there’s the whole dating thing.

My mom will be at our house, doing plenty of worrying for all of us, I’m sure. But I still wish I could be home when he gets home, to pry a tidbit or two of information out of him before he gets his guard up. Maybe my mom will get the scoop and text me.

This isn’t the first time parenthood has me torn between two places–maybe the very first was when my daughter needed an x-ray while I was pregnant with my son–but the events seem to get more momentous as they get older, and the times they want to share with me are fewer and farther between.