Two Rooms

This is a piece I wrote in September, 2022.

I dropped my baby off at college Wednesday. He was the last of his friends to leave, as his school is on the quarter system and is the very last to start. I helped him set up his room with the items we carefully picked out over the last month, obsessing over those “the 20 most important items to bring to college” lists. It reminded me of the nesting period when I was pregnant with him, when parents-to-be are known for getting the baby things ready - the perfect crib, the most soothing rocking chair, the softest onesies. I stared calling it “Nesting -  2.0.”  I became fully fixated on the fact that every list suggested getting a mattress topper – as dorm room beds are not so comfortable, apparently. I decided that it had to be not too hard, not too soft, not smelling like chemicals (which apparently many did according to the reviews.)  I scoured the internet and Amazon and read every review on every single topper. I knew that it had become something I could control in a world where soon I would have very little to do with his day-to-day life. I didn’t care.  He was leaving but I could at least find the absolute perfect magical mattress topper.

My grief therapist warned me in July. She said, “just to warn you, dropping Ben off at college will most likely elicit another big wave of grief,” in addition to the tsunami of grief that had begun to wash over me. I joked that perhaps since I was already in the middle of a tsunami, perhaps one more big wave will not even faze me. She said, “perhaps.” 

We set up the room, he unpacked his clothes and actually hung things up in his new closet (I’d never actually seen him hang anything up at home, so progress already!) I, of course, took to the task of attaching the world’s most luxurious and comfortable mattress topper to the plastic covered dorm mattress just as I attached the most perfectly luxurious and overpriced crib bumpers to his crib 19 years ago.  We hung up a tapestry he picked out to make it feel homey, took the requisite photos of Ben in his new room, had lunch, and I was on my way.

 I drove the two hours back to Portland with waves of tears washing over me intermittently – about Ben. About Owen. About change and grief and loss and children growing up. The waves of grief intermingled with gratitude that Owen had visited the college with Ben in April. They had that together. I had dinner with a friend in Portland that night and it was fun and lovely and just right. No tsunami. No breakdown. Just the next thing. It was okay.

Until the next day, when I got home and walked into his empty room.  Tsunami.  I sat on his floor and felt like I had been cracked open. Missing Ben. Missing Owen. Missing how all of this was SUPPOSED to go. But alas, just as there is no spoon, there is no supposed to. This I have learned. I climbed onto his bed and sat. And breathed. Then a different tsunami flooded in – nine years of the most wonderful memories of Ben spent growing up in this room. Ben and friends lining up his massive collection of knights and dragons and castles of blocks. Young Ben and Nicola repeatedly playing some game about a rabid cat named Tails and its owner and seeing Nic take flying leaps off the bed and body slamming Ben on the ground.  Sitting with Ben at his desk during Covid and quizzing him for AP Biology tests. And this summer, crying together and consoling each other and making our way one moment at a time through the big waves.

I asked Nicola to take a photo of me on Ben’s bed. I wanted to capture this moment in time. I wanted to remember this moment of two rooms – one so full of memories and moments and love and growing up, the other a blank slate, full of excitement and fear and potential and - growing up. And then it hit me – I too am leaving one room for another. I am leaving a room of 33 years of love and laughter and parenting and growing up…for another room, one I didn’t ask for or want, full of the unknown.

I realized, like Ben, I will always have the old room with all the hundreds and thousands of moments and memories and love and the most wonderful journey.  As for the new room, while there is not a list for me of the 20 things I must bring or buy to make the new room more livable or comfortable, I know that in the meantime I can always hang out in Ben’s old room and lie on his bed. Which by the way, it very, very comfortable.