Moving Ahead Also Means Moving Out

David Gosse turns 18 this week. A few days ago, he graduated from Cheney High School with a 3.99 grade point average.

In less than 90 days, he will leave home for Northwestern University outside of Chicago.

His world is changing fast.

On a still, sunny afternoon between high school and college, David imagines his future as bright, yet tinged with the sense of loss over something good being left behind.

“For me, this time is really a mixed bag,” said the winner of the Spokane Scholar Award for best science student in the region.

“I’m really looking forward to next year, getting out of the house and all that, but it’s sort of tough to think about leaving my family and friends behind.”

Graduation from high school, moving out of the house, going to college - these are bold-type events in a life.

A chapter is about to turn, the plot about to thicken.

In families where children have been central to the daily calendar of events, transportation and meals, the prospect of the oldest son moving out inevitably leaves a hole - at least in the mind of a mother.

“I guess bittersweet is probably a good word for it,” said David’s mother, Jodi Gosse, reflecting on her son’s imminent departure.

“I am so proud of him. I have a certain sense of self-satisfaction about what I have done as a parent. I know he has to make his own way. But I’m anxious about it.

Being a mother, she thought of the little things that would soon change forever.

“We tried to have dinner together most nights,” Jodi remembered. “We didn’t always talk about heavy stuff, but we did try to maintain open lines of communication right through high school.”

For David, the excitement of this fall tends to overwhelm warm recollections of the family dinner hour.

“When I want to eat, I will,” he said matter-of-factly. “I’ll eat when I’m hungry, after I stay out late, doing what I want.

“Honestly, I’m looking forward to being out of the house. I’m looking forward to having a little more freedom, being able to do a little more of what I want to do.”

His mother understands, as mothers must.

“I know a lot of the education he obtains in college will be outside the classroom,” she acknowledged in a tone of determined good cheer. “I was the one who did whatever I could to make sure my son attended a school away from home. I think this experience will be a really important part of learning how to get along and to live.”

But there is the matter of the holidays.

Since David will be nearly 2,000 miles from home, he likely will spend holidays with his grandmother who lives not far from the Northwestern campus.

“At first that was really comforting to me,” David’s mom said. “Then I thought: What am I going to be doing when he goes there for Thanksgiving?’

The task of parents is to rev the engines and orchestrate send-offs to get their seniors jazzed for flight away from the nest.

And, surely, it is the task of the young to take off.

Yet how unfair, even disrespectful, to those who must play these roles to disallow a bit of nostalgia for what has passed.

For David Gosse, that nostalgia involves his bedroom.

David’s bedroom walls are covered with posters of fast cars - a Ferrari, a Dodge Viper.

The images hang above his computer, his stereo and the knickknacks of a successful high school career.

When he spoke of his room, David said, “Oh yeah, I’m sort of expecting my room to pretty much stay as it is.”

He added, “My little brother wants to change it into a game room. He has in mind a place for a miniature pool table. But I think the odds are good that my room will pretty much stay as it is.”

It won’t.

The stereo and computer will travel with David east to Northwestern.

The trophies, ribbons and memorabilia from his high school days inevitably will be pushed back to make room for the accomplishments and memories of David’s two brothers now coming up through school.

One brother, Nathan, is incoming junior class president. The other is a billiards player.

That place once filled by an eldest son will become a vacuum on Sept. 15. The nature of a household abhors a vacuum.

Nathan’s accomplishments and little Joe’s billiards will begin to creep into David’s space.

And Jodi Gosse has some designs on David’s bedroom, too.

“My husband is working on his doctoral thesis and I have a feeling David’s room will become my husband’s work space,” she said.

In any family, the spaces each of us occupies eventually will be remodeled according to the seasons of our lives, seasons that inevitably change.

, DataTimes