By Esther C. Baird, first published in the Ipswich Local News, August 30, 2023
I guess summer is over.
Christmas decorations are back at Costco, Starbucks has dropped its fall menu, and, despite my protests, it’s back-to-school season.
Back-to-school with teens and college kids isn’t quite the thrilling event of yesteryear. I have no idea what our girls buy. My participation in back to school shopping is no longer required, though my credit card is welcome. But at least this year, I’m still needed for back-to-college.
This is our second year with a college kid out in Chicago. And while the drive west was familiar and therefore easier, the move-in was 1000 percent harder.
Last year, we pulled up to our freshman daughter’s dorm, and the whole campus was excited she was there. The football team and upperclassman were ready to carry our carefully packed bags. They cheered us on with lines of helpful, athletic, kids. We barely had to lift a finger before our daughter’s room was unpacked.
But when you have a sophomore, the football team is at practice and the bags are not particularly well packed. They were thrown into storage four months ago, during second semester finals. They were next year’s problem.
Which is now.
Additionally, our daughter and her roommate were super-excited to get a room in a more centrally located dorm this year. So cool and so close and so … historic.
“It says it was built in two phases, in 1937 and 1945,” I said, as I read about it.
“Yes! I’m in the newer side!” She said excitedly. You know, if 80 years is new.
I nodded, “Let’s call it classic.”
It was a lovely, traditional brick building with gables and white-rimmed windows.
“And, wow,” I paused, “Your room is on the top floor!” I leaned way, way, back, staring at the row of dormer windows sticking out five levels up.
“Yep! Don’t worry — there’s an elevator. Though only one. And I guess there are about 300 kids in this dorm.”
I’m more of a words-and-theology person and less of a math-and-numbers person, but even I could solve this real life word problem. Three hundred kids and their mini-fridges and IKEA bags and boxes of random items packed in a rush last year, divided by a single elevator equaled, “Let’s take the stairs. It will be good for us! We’re strong and capable!”
Did I mention it was 99 degrees?
But it was simply faster to carry all those boxes of shampoo and books mixed in with sneakers and blankets up the five flights of stairs, than to wait for the elevator that, while doing its best, had perhaps peaked in the 1980s.
I stayed positive. “These stairs have such charming crown molding and fascinating window shapes!”
Then, after a few times up and down, I had a more informed point of view. “I can see why they wouldn’t want to take any of these unique windows out to put in, say, a second elevator, just like I can see why you packed 800 coat hangers in with your empty binders and a dead plant. There is so much logic in the world if only you know where to look!”
But by hour four of the storage-unit-to-car-to-campus-to-dorm-room shuffle, I lost my spunk.
“It’s so architecturally fascinating!” I said, huffing, as my heart rate spiked. “Truly I’m enchanted, only WHERE IS THE FOOTBALL TEAM AND WHO FORGOT HOW GRAVITY WORKS IN DESIGNING THIS THING?”
We took a coffee break at that point, as some of us were feeling logistically disheartened and others of us were having grown-up tantrums. Thankfully, her room, up there in the stratosphere, had some top-rate modern air conditioning, for which I almost wept with gratitude.
In the end, clothes were hung (though some hangers did not live to see another day), beds were made, fairy lights and posters were mounted, and their oasis in the sky was complete.
Our daughter was officially back to school, leaving me free to go pick out Christmas ornaments at Costco.