Dylan is nearing the end of school – forever. He’s legally an adult, he knows how to drive, and he doesn’t need me to sign any of his forms. Prom and the last day of school are around the corner, and graduation day is going to be promptly followed by college orientation.
So I am starting to focus on Shane.
I don’t mean that I’m paying more attention to Shane – because really, I am not. In fact, I might be paying less attention to Shane than ever before. Instead, my worries are focused on Shane. I’m starting to notice that he’s not as concerned as he should be about things – like grades, cleanliness, and chores around the house.
I’m starting to worry about his sugar intake, his overindulgence in dairy items, his dry skin. I’m overly concerned that his room looks like a pig sty. I’m wondering if I can still trust him, the way I always have – not because he’s done anything wrong, but because I’ve just noticed that Shane is 15.
Shane is an amazing young man, and I could count his flaws – when he has them – on one hand. But I am getting a little sick with worry about him.
Because Dylan is stepping out of the spotlight. He’s very carefully and deliberately allowing me to let him go.
Even if I don’t want to. And I really, really, really don’t want to.
Over the weekend, Shane went on a church retreat. In an idyllic setting with just enough rain to make it cool, and 30 people peacefully exploring nature, he had a wonderful time.
When he came home, Shane answered all of my questions. He told me about the group activities, the Bible verses they discussed, the team trust exercises, sitting on rocks in the water, his fun roommates, the woods in darkness, and s’mores by the campfire.
I absorbed every word. I love listening to Shane.
“It sounds like you made some new friends, too,” I said, referring to his roommates and hoping to encourage more discussion.
“Yeah,” he said. “But mostly I talked to the group leaders. They kept coming over to me like, ‘hey, I’d better go talk to the shy kid.'”
This peaked my interest. I was always the shy kid, so Shane appearing shy intrigued me. I remember feeling completely left out all the time – school, church, Girl Scouts, dance class, team sports – all the time.
I didn’t want Shane to feel that. Listening to him talk, it didn’t seem like he felt left out. He is always quiet, never disruptive, but I haven’t considered him “shy” since the great dollhouse debacle back in ’08.
“Did you tell the group leaders that you just don’t talk much, and you don’t smile much, but that you are usually perfectly content?”
“No, I didn’t mind,” Shane said. “They were cool. I even found out that one of them is ranked higher than me in the ping pong league!”
Ah, a fellow pong player. Maybe he was 20 years old, but at least he plays ping pong.
So Shane made friends, and he became friends with the college-aged group leaders, too. I’d say it was a good weekend.
Dylan’s summer plans have been in flux since last summer. Now, not surprisingly, he wants a summer job.
For a year, Dylan has been considering a gap year. He’s gone to gap year fairs, job fairs, and been accepted into AmeriCorps. He turned it down, in favor of … well, nothing. He thought he’d be going to the beach for the summer, living there rent-free and making a ton of money, while having his girlfriend visit him frequently.
None of that happened. So, with summer on the immediate horizon, Dylan wants to work.
Dylan loves to work. I would be thrilled with him working. But he should have secured a summer job back in January, when I told him to start looking. Instead, he’s filling out applications just as fast as he can fill them.
Today, one company – a place he’d adore working – emailed him and asked him to send them his summer schedule. “This will help us to determine,” said the company, “whether or not it will be a good fit.”
I texted Dylan his schedule. He’s got high school, then the prom, a night at the theater, and graduation. This is followed by a week-long trip for a two-day college orientation, which is followed by a week-long mission trip. After that, he’s taking a week of vacation – and then heading to college less than two weeks after that.
Dylan sent all of that information to the company.
The email response was almost immediate, but not automated. “Thank you!” it said. “We would like to have you join us for an in-park interview!”
I couldn’t believe it. Who looks at the schedule he provided and interviews him anyway?
But they did – and how wonderful it would be if he could get that job and enjoy his summer, too. It might just be the perfect thing for him.
While Dylan was finalizing his college decision, Shane and I got started on our college search.
Yes, it’s too soon. No, I don’t care.
For Shane, since he doesn’t require the amount of “inspiration” that Dylan required, we started at the end of 9th grade – and we invited Shane’s friend along, to make it more of a vacation and less of a hard-core search.
Still, we started with Princeton. We (briefly) saw Rutgers, then drove up through Connecticut and Rhode Island, stopping at a bunch of schools – including Brown and Yale. Shane’s favorite was Fairfield University.
Shane is not headed for the Ivy League. He could, certainly, go that direction, if he so desired. But he has no interest in those schools. After one quick trip, I know that what Shane seeks is a small, quiet school – preferably with therapy dogs roaming around campus.
I think the dogs put him right over the edge at Fairfield.
We’re going to keep looking, of course, since I love to travel with Shane. It will be a different kind of search, and one that will be every bit as enjoyable as my trips with Dylan.
Shane has been saying that he wants to work on film – which means he’ll need to do something other than the “film program” that doesn’t actually exist at his school. We’ve already got some options on that end.
Unfortunately, there are only a handful of colleges with good film programs on this side of the country – a couple in Connecticut and Rhode Island, and a handful in upstate New York.
The good news: I already had a trip planned for upstate New York, but Dylan and I never took that trip. So it’s ready for Shane!
And the other good news is, Shane isn’t 100% married to the idea of working only in film. During this first excursion, he latched onto another major that he thinks he might enjoy: business and economics.
And that opens up a whole new world for Shane.
I’ve been making Dylan’s breakfast for 18 years. Since he started eating solid foods, I’ve done a lot of research on healthy breakfasts for babies – and then for toddlers, preschoolers, young children, and finally for kids with ADHD.
What I learned would make any parent’s head spin, but I figured it out to the best of my ability. He needs L-Tyrosine, Focus Factor and animal protein – either eggs or meat – to assist the way the amino acids function in his body. Omega 3 can also assist his brain.
So the logical breakfast: organic, cage-free eggs with Omega 3. I started feeding eggs to Dylan in eggnog, but the eggs were raw and the sugar content was high. He said he could eat scrambled eggs with lots of cheese – so I started making mini-omelets. And then, when he couldn’t quite get downstairs in time to eat a leisurely breakfast, I started putting those scrambled eggs with cheese onto buns so he could eat them on his way to school. For a few years, he’s been eating egg sandwiches two or three times a week.
With only a month left of high school, Dylan said – for possibly the tenth time – “I really don’t want to eat egg sandwiches anymore. They actually make me sick when I eat them in the morning.”
He said this very calmly and rationally. But I blew up.
For two days, I blew up. I raged and sputtered and screeched and hissed. “What else do you want me to do?!?” I squealed in my agony. “You won’t eat anything else!”
While he read me a list of things he would eat – pancakes, waffles, hash browns, croissants, fried potatoes – I screamed over him that none of those things have animal protein! I was driving them to school – for Dylan’s very last month of school – and I still thought he didn’t understand how his vitamins worked: “You need animal protein!”
But in the back of mind, something was stirring – something deep under the surface of my angst.
The kids got out of the car and I couldn’t even say, “Have a nice day.” I didn’t even put the front window down so the kids could pet Loki. In fact, I couldn’t say or do anything at all.
And then, halfway home, I suddenly could do only one thing: I could cry. A dam of tears burst from my eyes and deep, choking sobs erupted from my gut. Sitting at a red light, I was crying so hard, I couldn’t even breathe.
Loki looked up and instantly pulled toward me, nearly breaking his little seatbelt. He climbed into my lap at the red light and stuck his head under my chin, desperately trying to comfort me.
It was the sweetest, most touching thing my new dog has ever done for me.
I don’t know how Loki even knew that those sounds required comforting. But I think I know now how I’m going to survive Dylan’s move to college.
Last August, Dylan applied to ten colleges. He chose a few at random, but he’d visited nine of them and really liked six of them.
One college, however, stood out.
The first time Dylan visited Belmont University, he loved it. He wandered around it like he was in slow motion – staring at the gorgeous campus, climbing on things to get a better look, moving as though he had purpose.
Of the 87 campuses we visited in our initial run, Belmont’s 8,000-student campus was one of only two with a population between 3,000 and 20,000+. There was plenty of acreage to wander, but it wasn’t overwhelming. We could walk from one end to the other – but we weren’t done walking in ten minutes, either.
While we were there, an atypical fraternity met in the center of campus to get a photo taken, presumably for the yearbook. Belmont is a dry campus, which is why I say “atypical,” but they looked like a happy crew. They were all dressed in matching yellow shirts on a bright Saturday morning.
The frat photo was taken right outside of the bookstore, which I ducked into quickly. I was cold, so I bought a Belmont sweatshirt. Of the 87 colleges we visited, it’s the only time I bought something from the book store.
Nearly a year later, when Dylan was deciding which colleges he wanted to revisit during his junior year – which ones were worth officially touring and meeting with admissions – he only asked specifically about revisiting one.
“Which college was the one with the guys with the yellow shirts?”
“That was Belmont,” I said.
“That’s really the only one I care about,” he said.
Dylan wants a career in music. Belmont is the only college in the country that specializes in music degrees – but isn’t highly urban. Julliard, Curtis and Berkley, for example, are all in the gray hearts of huge cities. Belmont has a dozen or more degrees in music, and it’s located in the heart of Nashville. It’s got its own sprawling campus outside of the downtown area, and its notable alumni list is equally sprawling.
So we went back for an Open House day, where we were greeted by super-enthusiastic students all over campus. It was festive and fun, never phony, and the kids were bright-eyed and excited to be there.
The president’s welcome speech literally made me cry. The president described the atmosphere at Belmont, the students at Belmont, the mission at Belmont – and it was like he knew Dylan. Like he was speaking directly to Dylan, and not to a room of several hundred people. Dylan toured the School of Music and loved it.
We went back again, a year later. Dylan auditioned with the School of Music. Then we took a tour of the School of Music Business and Dylan loved that, too.
Dylan got his acceptance from Belmont last fall.
We celebrated, but we didn’t announce it. After all, there were nine other schools to consider. We didn’t want to jeopardize acceptance at his second-choice school, or any financial aid, by jumping in too fast.
Eventually, though, after months of consideration and plenty of wonderful options, Dylan decided to do what he’d hoped he could do all along.
Dylan accepted his offer of admission from Belmont University.
Dear Reputable Admissions Officer,
You called me last week regarding our son’s request to spend the night and sit in on a class or two at your college. I am emailing you now because I don’t have the confidence in the manager of our territory that I should. You seem responsive and trustworthy. I am sorry to add to your workload. But I’d like to give you the details of what happened, please.
Dylan realized that spending a little more time at your college might help him make his decision on which college to attend. So Dylan called his admissions representative and said he’d like to arrange an overnight. The rep said he could make that happen, and that he would email Dylan the details.
Then we waited a week. And another week. Dylan called again, and did not get a response. There was no message left for Dylan, as was later claimed. So I emailed the admissions office.
That’s when I got your call, and your email, assuring me that your campus DOES have a professional admissions office. And after you called us, we got a phone call from the admissions rep. He assured us that he had made arrangements for the overnight. He said he would email us the details ‘next week.’
It is now late on Wednesday of ‘next week.’ We believe there ARE details to be had – but no one has sent them to us. We know no more now than we did after our initial phone call.
Is it possible that our rep just doesn’t have Dylan’s email address? If it were me, upon realizing my initial error, I would have gotten Dylan’s email address as fast as was humanly possible and sent out those details the minute I got them. Instead, we’ve heard nothing.
Again.
Dylan’s grandfather worked in higher education public relations for 50 years, so we all know that this is the kind of thing that embarrasses a perfectly good college. We KNOW yours is a good school. We really like it. We’ve had nothing but perfect dealings with absolutely everyone we’ve met thus far.
But I am hesitant to ask our representative for anything.
Maybe we are just an anomaly, an oversight, the one thorn in the territory that our rep can’t reach for whatever reason. But it seems ridiculous to work so hard on our end to make a simple overnight happen.
So please, if you could, just forward me know the details of Dylan’s overnight. We give up on waiting for our rep. And maybe forward my email to someone who can find out where the real issue lies, so that when my future Maryland children look at your college, they have a representative who helps them.
Ten minutes later, after a phone call from Dylan’s admissions rep:
I would now like to send my sincerest apologies to both of you. Having just talked to our admissions rep, it seems as though the error is on Dylan’s end. He DID, indeed, get at least one phone call from our rep with a voice message. Dylan thought it was spam and deleted the number.
When I asked Dylan if anyone had ‘messaged’ him, he didn’t think to check his voicemail. He was looking for a ‘message’ – i.e., a text. Upon looking into the dates and the number I had, Dylan found the voice message that he had earlier ignored. Our rep was right when he said that there are too many miscommunications with all of today’s technology!
Please know that I am 100% satisfied and excited (again) for Dylan to be coming to your campus – and I am sorry for taking so much of your time.
This weekend, both boys were in the school musical. They did a wonderful job, and I have a lot to say about it.
But I am exhausted. I realize I haven’t been writing blogs as often as I should, but my willingness to write about my revelations is overshadowed by my unwillingness to cry.
This was their only play together. This was Dylan’s last play, ever, and probably his last performance on a high school stage.
So I am not in any position to write about it without crying. So I’m not going to write about it today.
After all the prior visits, Dylan has now been to two colleges overnight. He’s got one more on the horizon.
Dylan is taking into consideration his best fit – financially, emotionally and for his future. He’s been pretty gung-ho on one college the whole time, but the finances have thrown him for a loop. So, overnights are important.
What’s interesting to me is how close he’s coming to the national deadline without making a decision. He needs to announce his decision by May 1. But he’s still considering all of his options.
Dylan is even considering a gap year – still, even though he’s already dropped out of one amazing opportunity. He’s applied for a couple more amazing opportunities, and has even considered living at home and working for a year to save some money.
His time and energy, however, are still spent on his phone, chatting with friends, and wondering if he should go to this concert or that concert. Yesterday he announced a spectacular, totally amazing deal: three concerts for only $60! It didn’t matter to Dylan that the concerts were taking place more than an hour from home, or that they were happening during the summer when he has no idea where he’ll be living or what he’ll be doing.
Last summer, I gave him a timeline. The deadline for deciding on whether or not to take a gap year was January (three months ago). And the deadline for deciding on college was last week – although I expected that decision to be made sooner, as well.
But my timelines are irrelevant. Dylan is not a fan of deadlines. This is likely to be his lifelong challenge.
Shane wrote a paper for school. The assignment was to write in the style of a specific author – I don’t remember which one – and describe a day in Shane’s own life using that author’s style.
I thought it would be interesting to see what he wrote, so I asked if I could read it.
“Sure,” he said. “Some of it’s fiction, but it’s about the day I got stung by all the jellyfish.”
Poor Shane. Those jellyfish seemed to go straight for him.
Shane wrote about a day at the beach – a vacation I’d planned for months, something we’d done for the first time in years just this past summer. We used to go annually with my entire extended family, and the kids loved it. This year, it was just the four of us. So I was excited to see what he remembered, after all the fun he’d had – except, of course, for the jellyfish.
This is what I read:
“We all decided to go to the beach. We enjoyed it quite a lot at first. True, it didn’t provide us, at least me, with the splendid and magical feeling of vacationing with the whole family, staying up late, doing whatever I wanted to do. What it did provide, however, was a fine example of how life has changed since my younger years. My family had trouble going one minute without fighting with each other. Why must they fight? What happened to the good old days? It doesn’t matter.”
My heart sank. We had argued a lot for about two days of our eight-day vacation. Shane didn’t argue; mostly he just watched, as always. While Dylan and I bickered, and Bill and I tussled back and forth, Shane sat quietly, absorbing everything, just like he does at home.
Only this time, it happened in a condo next to the ocean on a gorgeous, sunny, summer day. It happened during our last-ever beach vacation as a full family of four. With Dylan leaving home soon, vacations will never be the same, so I’d planned as many wonderful trips as I could.
And then I ruined them.
Shane will be the first to say that the story he wrote, the description of his day, was just fiction. He wouldn’t want to hurt my feelings, because he doesn’t like to complain. And he never mentions the yelling. Ever.
Sadly, it’s probably because he’s so accustomed to it.
I can’t fix the problem now. My frustration spilling over into the beauty will forever be etched into his mind as “the way it was.”
And it’s my fault.
Recently, I found a doctor. I changed my diet. In fact, what I eat – which was previously garbage – added so much angst, exhaustion and sickness to my life. I’m on a road to a healthy life that has changed my entire outlook. The yelling has, as a direct result, subsided a great deal. I’m not perfect, but I’ve become more accepting and easygoing. I just don’t yell as much now.
But I found that doctor in September, after summer vacations were all over and etched in my children’s minds forever. I found that doctor when my kids were teenagers and couldn’t wait to get out of the house. I found that doctor after their childhoods were scarred with screaming.
I changed my life too late to save my own children.
