The Full Suburban: Parenting a college student is about being ready when they need you

The call came in at 8:20 last Monday morning, exactly 40 minutes before my daughter Lucy’s first college class was supposed to begin. It had actually been two calls, both of which I’d missed – one coming to my cellphone, and the other to our landline.

In the months leading up to the day when we dropped Lucy off at college, my friends commiserated with me about the heartache of leaving a child at school.

“But don’t worry,” they assured me. “She’ll be calling you every day, wanting to fill you in on all the details of her life, asking you for advice, just wanting to hear her mom’s voice.”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “Lucy’s never been a call-home-for-a-chat kind of girl.”

“Just you wait,” they said. “She’ll be calling you so much, it will feel like she never left.”

So I waited. On Friday, we said goodbye in the doorway of her dorm in Utah, and I broke Parent Code by forgetting to act stoic and wait until she was out of sight before bawling my eyes out.

On Saturday, I stumbled around our house, trying to avoid going upstairs, where the sight of Lucy’s empty bed would send me straight into sobs.

On Sunday, we had friends over for dinner and I had to take a minute when I realized we needed one less seat at the table; that we were now – for day-to-day logistical purposes at least – a family of seven.

And still not a word from Lucy. She’d texted little things here and there, and we’d tried FaceTiming her late on Sunday night, but she was so stressed about preparing for her first day of classes that it was a less-than-joyous conversation.

So when the two missed calls from Lucy came in that Monday morning, my heart did a little flutter.

“This is it,” I thought, scrambling to hit all the right buttons on my phone so I could quickly return her calls. “This is the moment I’ve been waiting for – she’s about to need her mama.”

I imagined what was about to come at me from the other end of the line: “I need you, mom! My first class is supposed to start in 40 minutes, and I’m so overwhelmed. I can’t do this, I miss you so much, I’m so lonely. Give me advice! Please, this is something only you can fix!”

I took a deep breath as Lucy’s phone started ringing and I prepared to give the biggest pep talk of my life. Lucy picked up almost immediately.

“Hi mom,” she said, sounding a little panicked.

“Hey honey, what’s up?” I replied, trying to sound like I hadn’t been waiting for this phone call my entire life.

“Do you know where my Tupperware lids are?” she asked.

I blinked, possibly audibly.

“Your Tupperware lids?” I repeated back, trying to overcome the extreme whiplash I was experiencing. I thought back to the harried moment in her dorm when I had helped unpack her meager kitchen supplies. “Um, yeah. They’re in the drawer to the right of the big cupboard.”

“Oh right!” she exclaimed with relief, her first-day-of-college crisis immediately solved. “OK, thanks!”

There was no pleading for advice, no declaration of loneliness or overwhelm. I wished her luck on her first day and let her get off the phone quickly; she had bigger fish to fry than talking to dear old mom.

I hung up the phone and chuckled to myself. It wasn’t the call I was expecting, but in a way, I was grateful. Grateful that she was feeling OK enough about everything that she didn’t need me. Grateful that her biggest worry at the moment was not navigating her harsh new reality as a college student, but rather, “How am I going to keep these hash browns fresh so I can eat them for dinner tonight?”

As of this writing, I’m still waiting for that big, update-on-college-life phone call. But when it comes, you know I’ll be ready with a pep talk and a drawer full of Tupperware lids.

Julia Ditto shares her life with her husband, six children and a random menagerie of farm animals in Spokane Valley. She can be reached at dittojulia@gmail.com.