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Commentary
My daughter begins college in Paris, while I return to Cambridge. ‘Home’ is changing for us both
Transitions: I’ve never been a fan. To be in a relationship, to hold a job or live someplace is to know that inevitably you must say goodbye. This is the rule of nature: everything falls apart. In the words of Pete Seeger, by way of the Byrds: “Turn! Turn! Turn!” But the annual shift from summer to fall has always been the toughest transition for me.
I still recall the loud song of August crickets at my grandparents in Kewanee, Illinois, which sounded the last days of easy peace: long afternoons at the pool, endless ears of sweet corn and tomatoes so delicious that we ate them sliced with only a shake of salt. Back to school meant losing summer friends and going back to the stress of homework and my futile attempts at fitting in.
Those days are long behind me, but the sad feelings the end of summer provokes remain. As my social media feed fills with pictures of kids on their first days of school and jokes about sweater weather and pumpkin-spice everything, I can no longer ignore the inevitable. But this year the end of the summer means not just the shortening of days and the return of seriousness — the belted coat, the zippered boots — it means my daughter will be living outside our home to begin college. Where she once found comfort by my side, she must now leave it to seek her own fortune.
In France, where she starts her freshman year (an option at her university), they call the transition from summer into fall, La Rentrée. It is the “rentrée” from vacation to the capital but also the “rentrée” of parliament (la Rentrée politique). Children go back to school (la Rentrée scolaire). Offices reopen (la Rentrée economique). New exhibits and shows open (la Rentrée culturelle). And hundreds of books, including the most important of the year, are published (la Rentrée litteraire). Parisians must recover control of their city not just from the annual tourists (whose rolling suitcases announce themselves on the cobble stone streets) but from the Summer Olympics and ParaOlympics, celebratory events that nonetheless disrupted city life.
In English there are two translations of “rentrée”: return and re-entry.
Here in the states, the wheel of time slows in the summer months with long days, and a let’s talk in September mentality. But the return can also be a turning away -- from what was toward what is and what will be, especially for those of us helping our kids “fly the coop.”
In my case, what was: a Cambridge “us” made up of my daughter, husband and me. One where her care (physical, emotional) was among our chief concerns and responsibilities. We enjoyed her company at most mealtimes and her easy companionship in front of a movie on a Friday or Saturday night. Because she’s my size, we swapped shoes, t-shirts and jackets with ease.
What is: she’s now moved into a nondescript studio apartment, in a nondescript building, in a nondescript neighborhood called La Defense, just outside of Paris. There she lives among students who are like her but, as she now asserts in late night texts, not like her at all. She has yet to find her “people.” And her loneliness, only some days in, already grips my heart. I want to rush in, but my role is changing.
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In her tiny closet are the clothes I helped pick and pack back in Cambridge. Her favorite oversize jeans, fleece shirts and long jacketsfor layering. My still good Doc Martens that I no longer wear because they make my feet hurt. Then, after we walked to the local shop to get garbage bags, sponges and assorted comforts for her dorm room, she commanded me to leave. She wanted to set up her room, her new fan, her new toiletries without me. I wanted to say something. But her mouth was set, her eyes serious. As much as I yearned to make everything as good as it can possibly be. Isn’t this my job as her mother? I understood her need to be rid of me.
What will be: her growth, which may require more isolation and stumbles, a growth into self-hood whose path will be winding and sometimes rocky but mostly unknown.
What also will be: my own return to the relationship with my husband before we had our daughter. The rentrée du marriage? We will have to adjust to a new dynamic in the house, to meals, conversations and outings just the two of us. And there’s a return to who I was before I was a mother, and the mature woman I might become outside of that identity, someone who will take drawing classes, who’ll return to her writing projects and her teaching with renewed energy and commitment.
But in moving my daughter into her dorm in Paris, I also experienced a return to my college years, a rentrée of self. Over 30 years ago, I was, like her, a 19-year-old girl trying out adult life, a student in Paris, eager to learn not just the language but the complex Métro, and the customs of this new place (proper fork use, proper way to kiss hello and goodbye) — all without internet, Instagram or WhatsApp. And in those quiet moments between classes and outings with strangers I hoped could become real friends, I read letters from my dad. He wrote me that we are all home-leavers. Leaving the people we were supposed to be in order to become the people we are.
Back in June, when this transition still seemed far away, I warned my daughter: You will be lonely at times. You will get lost. Not everyone will be nice to you. I wish I could protect you from all of this, but I can’t. This is what it means to grow up. You must sit with the unknown and learn to weather disappointment so you can build a sense of home inside of yourself, a home that you can return to whenever you need.
What I didn’t say: I am still working on this especially now, as I must return to the person and the marriage that I knew before you.
