Ghosts of losses past

For a pair of though-provoking and prayerful reflections by a parent the transition to college, read Letting Go 1 and 2 at People for Others.

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We were threading our way through the hordes of parents and students in WJU's¹ campus center, on a mission to get Crash his academic robe (to be donned at convocation the next day) when we ran into the delightful Protestant chaplain Math Man and I had met on our tour of sacred spaces earlier in the day.² He stopped to say hello and ask if we'd found the tour useful (short answer, absolutely).

I turned to introduce him to Crash, "And this is my son, Thomas...uh, sorry, my son [insert Crash's real name here - which is not Thomas]" Where on earth did that come from?

Thomas is my first husband's name, and while our 31st wedding anniversary would have been last week, in all the hubbub of Crash's move to college, Tom's death is not at the top of my mind. Clearly it isn't buried all that deeply, either. I first met Tom when he was just a couple of years old than Crash is now, something hard to imagine even as I roll my mental film back all those years to see him as he was in college.

The shift in family structure set in motion by Crash's transition is nowise as cataclysmic as the one that opened a chasm in my life 25 years ago, but it seems that are are new cracks that I'll need to learn to step around, build bridges over, or sit at the edge of and contemplate. But I liked Patient Spiritual Director's reading of my parapraxis as a gentle sign of the communion of saints. Tom is there, watching over Crash.

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1. Wonderful Jesuit University
2. Where we learned that the altar used in the chapel given over to the use of the Protestant community has a movable altar, which once held a relic of St. William. When the altar was moved to use in a large Mass elsewhere on campus, the reliquary fell out, and in all the ado, was somehow misplaced. I'm not sure what it says about me that the first thought to pop into my mind was, "How long before there is Twitter meme about St. William, a la the Brookyn Zoo's cobra's feed of last year?"

Contemplative parenting: watching my inner control freak

The Washington Post posted an op-ed Friday by Barry Glassner and Morton Schapiro on ways to rein in helicopter parents on college campuses. Rather than tell the parents to step back and give their children some space, they suggest channeling parental energies into efforts more consonant with the college's mission and coaching parents on how to tell their children, "Good luck with that!" when the child seems to leans too heavily on parental resources for problem solving.

The message is don't be (as Crash would say) "that parent" or as Glassner and Schapiro even more bluntly put it: a "counterproductive, infantilizing, control freak." Crash (and The Boy) have had little need of parental hovercrafts for a long time now. They learned to do their own laundry while I was on my 30-day retreat, and have managed their own academic schedules (and study habits) for years. Math Man and I can and should take some credit for setting up the conditions that led to their growth, but in part we have been blessed with kids who have had few problems that they couldn't manage to untangle on their own — and for this I'm grateful.

Crash managed to apply for college, select one, and organize himself to go pretty much on his own (well, we wrote a lot of checks and read drafts of some, though not all, of the various essays he wrote along the way, but "we" did not apply to college). So why on earth did I find myself within 5 minutes of arriving at Wonderful Jesuit University (henceforth WJU) biting my tongue to keep from offering advice on which side of the street to walk on from parking garage to dorm?

The notion that contemplation is something that happens quietly sitting on a cushion in a zendo (or in my case, a seiza bench in my orationis angulus) is a fine one, but for me, at least, contemplation doesn't end when I stand up. It is in part the challenge of being able to stand in the moment, noticing the feelings, but not letting them take over. It's emotional weather watching.

I spent much of the weekend at WJU contemplatively practicing. There was a lot of weather to practice with.

Noli me tangere: college edition

I took a course some years back on images of Mary Magdalene. We looked at many examples of "Noli me tangere" figures -- this Caravaggio among them. Though the Latin translation reads "Don't touch me!" the original Greek (Μή μου ἅπτου) is better translated as "don't keep on clinging to me."

I thought of this Gospel today when we left Crash at Wonderful Jesuit University. I wanted to cling to him, to freeze this frame here and now. Instead I hugged him hard, kissed him and blessed him as I have done almost every night of his life, making the sign of the cross on his forehead and saying, "May God and all his angels watch over you." Then watched as he ducked through a doorway and into the next phase of his life.

We went to Mass together this morning, and listening to his voice, firmly reciting the Creed next to me, left me in tears. My tears were not for the imminent parting, but in awed and sudden recognition of what had happened. Crash, now professing what I promised for him at his baptism, is an adult.

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Image is from Wikimedia.

Consult not your fears

Crash started blogging the first week of his freshman year in high school, and kept at all the way through, posting on average once a week. He's written nearly 200 posts, a mix of poetry and prose, fact and fiction, humor and introspection. I've enjoyed listening to his voice grow more sure, his use of language more deft. I write about Crash and his brother frequently (I do ask their permission before posting their exploits), but it's a bit odd to find the shoe on the other foot and hear what he has to say about me!

He's been writing a series of posts about getting ready to start college, about roommate selection, negotiating the enormous catalog of courses — and now (in at least partial revenge for this post, I suspect), about dealing with your parents. I'm grateful he doesn't detail the "friction" we've had as we negotiated (and re-negotiated) boundaries!

Pope John XXIII has good advice, not only for Crash, but for me:

"Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do. " — Pope John XXIII (quoted by Crash here)

More blessings

This morning I asked an Augustinian friend if he would bless Crash after Mass today (it was Crash's last outing as an altar server before he leaves for Wonderful Jesuit University). "Sure, we'll meet afterward."

The readings were certainly apt for sending off students, Wisdom setting an inviting table for those who would learn, Paul advising the Ephesians to be discerning. Wisps of memories kept drifting through. Standing with Crash at the doors to the Church, asking of the Church that he be baptized. The time he bent over after the second reading (from St. Paul to the Romans) and at age 5 whispered wonderingly in my ear, "Rome, I've been to Rome." Watching him grow taller and his shoulders broader over the decade he has been an altar server, now effortlessly balancing the Missal for the presider. I cried unabashedly as he came up the aisle today, holding up the cross to which I had bound him so many years ago.

Communion ended and the presider came down to the front of the altar, rather than stand at the presider's chair, to offer the Communion prayer and final blessing, and winked at Math Man and me as he did so. He gestured to Crash to bring the Missal to him, and said the prayer after Communion. He turned around to set the Missal back on the altar and as Crash went to move back to his place, he said, "Stay for a moment."

The presider asked if there were any other people headed off to college, and then went on to say that while his parents had asked for a blessing for Crash after Mass, it seemed to him that the whole community should be part and parcel of the blessing for all the young people we were sending on, so he'd decided to do it now. He noted that Crash was a "child of the parish" — baptized here, at a Mass 18 years ago, where the parish promised, aloud, to support us in our work. He then quoted from the second reading, "And do not get drunk on wine, in which lies debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit..." and said that may be the blessing college students need most, which made us all laugh.

He then grew serious as we asked God to grant that Crash and his compatriots be happy, successful, and filled with peace. That they might have wisdom. Grace flowed from the mystery we had just celebrated, in rivers. And then Crash picked up the cross again, and holding it high above our heads, led the way out.