The family didn't feel right. Dropping off the oldest child at college for the first time was invigorating but also opened a chasm of emptiness, a vacant feeling that the family couldn't quite pinpoint. Everyone was proud of the boy about to start college and everyone was excited for him. But, still. He wouldn't be around much anymore. His once full voice would be reduced to the vibrations of a cell phone.
The family scouted the campus in their old Suburban, driving through the grace of a small college town. The younger kids pointed out good climbing trees, places for the college son to park his bike or eat lunch outside. More than a century ago, craftsmen used beauty to highlight the importance of academic work in the construction of the buildings there. Each structure had the aura of a chapel, each one announcing the holy work that is education. The mother and father exhaled in both pride and nervous anticipation.
Rolling slowly through the campus, the parents were quiet as their eyes scanned the faces of other students there, wondering if those strangers might end up being friends with their son. The younger kids chattered away but the college boy silently took it all in with his parents. Pristine paths crawled through meticulous lawns and the father tried to imagine his son walking to class, backpack hanging off one shoulder, pen stuck behind his ear. The mother quietly pointed to giant trees and more holy buildings.
The slow, deliberate drive through campus had the pace of a funeral procession. While the younger kids continued talking excitedly, the parents and the college son remained mostly silent. Uncertainty. That's what it was. It was the uncertainty of what would happen next that filled the car that day. For years, the family knew what to expect when school rolled around. They knew the schedule, knew the contents of the brown-bag lunch, knew the teachers for the most part. But now, nothing familiar was on the horizon.
Summer closes with precision. The first bell rings on that opening school day and just like that--the summer's gone. Kids approach elementary schools, high schools, and colleges with the same trepidation that is so very common to the American experience. Will I be okay? Will I be successful? How will I find my spot? Parents are the same way--will others see in my child the unique and important young life that I see? The difficulty of change impacts us all. But the journey into a new stage of life finds its understated beauty in overcoming the cobwebs of uncertainty at the beginning.
The family paused at a stop sign at the end of their slow campus excursion. Then, the youngest child in the Suburban pointed west and exclaimed "Look!" All heads turned to see the sun, giant in its nadir, silently touching the tops of trees in a slow descent. The wife turned to the husband with a smile.
The husband turned the vehicle to the right and gunned the engine. Soon, country woods and fields sped by as they raced down a two-lane road. The sun glowed orange in its slow fall and beams of yellow arced into the clouds higher in the sky. The mother rolled the windows down and the kids yelled for the father to go faster, faster, faster! The family chased that setting sun away from the main road, away from the campus, away from the uncertainty.
The father briefly looked to the mother and was struck by the beauty of blond strands of hair dancing around her smiling face in the wind-blown air. He glanced to the rearview mirror to see the kids all leaning out windows, the youngest trying to catch the falling orange glow on her extended hands.
The greenery blurred as the Suburban sped until finally the family had the setting sun directly in front of them. The father screeched the tires as they whizzed past a quiet monastery and into an open field that led to a cliff. All of the car doors opened at once and the college boy picked up his youngest sister as the family ran in a laughing heap, urging one another on. Dodging gopher holes, ant hills, and thorns picking at their shins, they made it to the edge.
There, the sun finally collapsed into the horizon in a slow genuflection of light. Breathless, the family watched the sun's delicate royal pause as it left the day sky. The awe of the scene silenced them again.
The college son would leave them soon. The uncertainty would give way to confidence. The new life would unfold in harmony as it should. The fog of beginning something new would give way to the clarity of a new day.
And the family knew. They knew that despite the change, the goodness of it was evident. They knew that they'd always rely on each other no matter the distance. They knew that holding on to the past prevents growth so they let it go and welcomed what would come next. They knew that each of them would chase sunsets whenever possible.
They would chase those sunsets because they knew that for a new day to dawn, the sun must first settle behind the hills so the past can take hold and the future begin.
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Steve Straessle, whose column appears every other Saturday, is the principal of Little Rock Catholic High School for Boys. You can reach him at sstraessle@lrchs.org.
Editorial on 08/11/2018