Part of me truly dreaded the coming of this day where my youngest finally reaches her 18th birthday and is now legally considered an adult.
Truth be told, it’s nowhere near as scary to me as it was when her oldest brother Nicholas passed that threshold and an even more harrowing one this year with his 21st birthday. Even *HE* admitted this was so this afternoon and it only took all of two seconds for that truth to come out of his mouth! 😉
We’re only a few days away from her moving into her dorm room at Campbell University where she’ll move on from being an Emerald Eagle to becoming a Fighting Camel and begin her journey in the study of law.
It hasn’t escaped my notice that the distance to Buies Creek is roughly the same as the distance from my father’s house in Port Orange to the University of Central Florida in Orlando if you used the back roads starting with Tomoka Farms Road and cut through Osteen and Oviedo.
It’s about 45 minutes and almost as many miles for each of them.
There will be times in the coming months where it’ll feel like a few hundred light years.
And for the first time, I’ll truly understand what it meant when I saw my father trying desperately to hold back the tears after he and Grandpa had trucked all of my belongings to Osceola Hall and we schlepped it into the suite that would be my home for the coming year.
Thirty-six years on and I can still see them getting back into that huge brown Plymouth Trailduster SUV and make the turn toward out of the car park toward the main entrance.
I had finally made it.
At long last, I would finally know what it was like to truly be free. To go where I willed when I wanted to, to do as I wished (within the law and reason), and hope like hell I’d find the way to survive the experience.
The Amish have a tradition known as rumspringa (literally “running around” in the Pennsylvania Dutch dialect) where the youth of the community from 16-18 years old are permitted to live with less restrictions upon their daily lives. Most of these youth tend to stay with their family but it’s not uncommon for them to go out amongst the English into a world that is potentially quite alien from the one they’ve always known.
That was my first semester at UCF and that year of personal rumspringa is probably the one piece of advice I can truly offer from the heart:
Don’t be breathtakingly stupid in your first experience of the freedom that adulthood brings like I was! Pay close attention to your studies as you always have and keep your eyes on the goal that is awaiting you. But take the time to truly enjoy your time at college as it is supposed to be a fun time where you meet mates you may well have for the rest of your life as you’re learning what you need to pursue your career.
I’m shakin’ the dust of this crummy little town off my feet and I’m gonna see the world. Italy, Greece, the Parthenon, the Colosseum.
Then, I’m comin’ back here to go to college and see what they know.
And then I’m gonna build things.
I’m gonna build airfields, I’m gonna build skyscrapers a hundred stories high, I’m gonna build bridges a mile long…
— George Bailey (“It’s A Wonderful Life”)
You’re going to learn many interesting things whilst at college seeing what things they may know.
Some of it may actually come in your studies in the classroom but the most relevant bits will be surviving the process and the bureaucracy to eventually find yourself on the other end with a degree in hand.
Cherish the friends you’ve had along the way and cherish the friends at university who have the same opposition that you do…several professors for a semester who think and assign as if they’re the only professor in your universe.
The ones you get really close with will be the ones you’ll be heading off to attend their weddings or see their kids come into the world and make memories that will last decades. They will become your most cherished mates because they’re going to understand without words what you’ve experienced all along the way.
Mark is one of the first people I met at UCF was during the orientation week about three weeks before I moved over to Orlando permanently. He’s probably one of the most die-hard Golden Knights fans I’ve ever known and he’s the one I’ve stayed in touch with (if mostly virtually through these past few years).
The last time we’d gotten together when he was attending a wedding in Chapel Hill, Jackie (then his companion and now his lovely wife who is originally from Peru and is well versed in many languages) observed that even though it’d probably been about 11 years since we’d seen each other, she could see straightway that it was as if no time had passed between us.
He’s a real mate…the kind that will move heaven and earth for you should you need him and he knows full well that the reverse is most certainly true. Those are the sorts of mates you want to keep close to your heart in the years to come!
You’re also going to learn to juggle responsibilities, assignments, and everything else in ways you cannot yet imagine.
Up to now, you’ve had a safety net of sorts. Teachers who were far more forgiving of late or missed assignments or being unprepared for the lesson than the average professor you will encounter ever will be. Parents who could argue your case with the teacher or be there late at night as the term’s project is due the following morning.
I hope you enjoyed all that because lesson #1 in “Adulting Sucks (Do Not Recommend!)” is that now that you’re 18, you’re an adult in the eyes of the law and anyone else that sets eyes upon you.
It’s all in your hands now…the freedom with as much if not more responsibility and consequences to go with it.
OK, so that’s the harsh reality stuff out of the way.
You’ve got this!
You’ve always been on the ball in terms of your studies and all of the other things you’ve juggled through the years and I don’t ever see that changing.
There will be plenty of situations where you might wonder if you’ve got what it takes to meet the challenge set before you.
That’s easy: you do! You always have and you always will.
I have absolutely no doubt that you will overcome whatever obstacles may be placed in your path as effectively now as you have these past 18 years.
I believe in you!
Whenever you might feel doubt or concern or worry, re-read that preceding sentence as many times as it may take.
And if that doesn’t do it for you, you’ve got much better technology in your hands now…hit me up with a text, a call, or even FaceTime me if you’re really in the mood to see this face that’s made for radio.
Please take as full advantage of that as you need or lean on your mates of the dromedary persuasion (the African dromedary has one hump, it’s the Bactrian camel that has two…the more you know!) in Buies Creek and I assure you that before you know it, they’ll be dressing you up in another set of graduation robes and handing you a degree.
You are cherished and loved orders of magnitude beyond the capacity of mere words to convey what I truly feel in my heart.
So please forgive me in the coming days when you just might see a tear or two (or a hell of a lot more!) as I turn a certain blue-coloured SUV out of the Campbell car park and leave one of the most treasured possessors of my heart to reach out and take hold of her destiny in her way and in her time.
I will know then what my father felt thirty-six years ago (almost nine years on and that man is still teaching me lessons to this day!)
But I have faith that amongst the tears of sadness that my precious daughter is no longer quite as conveniently located near by, there will be many more of those tears that are expressing the joy that she is ready and has everything she needs to be capable of stepping into her future and it will be a successful one.
I love you dearly!
Happy 18th birthday and may there be many, many happy returns of that day!