I should have known better than to venture into Target last weekend, but I didn't recognize the signs. The full parking lot. The couples laboring behind loaded shopping carts on their way to SUV's. Free samples of shampoo as soon as I walked through the door. Teenaged kids shopping with their parents. Aisles stacked with boxes of microwaves and mini fridges.
Move in day.
I remember it well.
Forty three years ago I arrived in the same town to the same campus in the back seat of a Buick Skylark. Mom and Dad were in the front, and everything I'd need for the next year was packed neatly in the trunk with room to spare. It wasn't all that much.
Enough clothes to fill the three piece set of Hartman luggage that I got for graduation, a set of sheets, a popcorn popper, a portable manual typewriter, two towels, two washcloths, laundry bag, detergent, a dictionary, and bathroom and school supplies. As best I recall, that was it. Maybe my high school yearbook and a picture of the high school boyfriend. But definitely no rug, no dorm furniture, no egg carton mattress pad, no TV, no supply of snacks and soda.
We carried it all to my room in no more than two trips and no need of a dolly. We walked around campus a bit and then they left. As they hugged me goodbye, Dad slipped me an emergency ten (maybe a twenty), and Mom said, "You'll do fine. Call collect on Sunday."
Thirty one and thirty four years later, I did it with my own daughters. We drove across country in an SUV overflowing with clothes and stuff. And after we unloaded it (dolly and extra help needed), I didn't turn around and go home. We took the obligatory trip to Wal-Mart or Target for everything they needed, but didn't pack.
They were quick to figure out that this was a time when Mom would spring for just about anything.
"I don't know if I'll want diet or non-diet Coke," they'd say.
"Get both," I'd respond. "Maybe some juice too. And yogurt."
"Everybody says I'll need one of those mattress pads for my bed."
"Throw one in."
"Ooh, I like that lamp."
"Let's get it."
My guess is that those shopping trips were my way of extending the time before I had to leave. Or perhaps, in filling their nests, mine didn't feel quite so empty.
But as I left Target last weekend and watched parents pushing loaded carts out to big SUV's I couldn't help wondering whether the last words of advice we're giving to our kids as we send them out into the world might have changed from the comforting and liberating words of, "You'll do fine," and, "Call collect," to the mantra of our time, "Consume, consume, consume."
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My story is similar. When I moved into a college dorm, I only needed a few boxes for all of my stuff. Both of my daughters, however, went to college in Boston and had to move into apartments, not dorms, so we had to rent a van to take everything and that didn't include a followup trip to Bed Bath & Beyond. The credit card bill stung - as if the tuition wasn't painful enough!
and even MY, time. this is to help them maintain
their self respect, which today,, yes,
is intimately connected to your consumer goods.
They hoisted that one on us good and hard, jl.
an unspoiled kiddo is a freak, an unloved child,
and would soon find themself a pariah in this
new place they are plunked into: Academia.
They have cable tv. right? And internet connections.
and co ed hotpools in the Community Area, where they
watch hi def tv on 60 inch screens to chill out.
then it happens, they get some angry technophobe english teacher
who expects them to read Moby g-damn Dick.
Damn prof wants to discuss this quote:
"All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event — in the living act, the undoubted deed — there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. Ahab to Starbuck
Tink--Yep.
Con--Free chips in aisle 9.
James--I feel a little guilty that I played into it.
jmac--There's a huge difference between what we have and what we need. Nothing like a move to realize that.
Jeannette--Thanks. I kind of wonder what we did without TV's or computers.
Gerald--I think most of us over-indulged our kids. The verdicts probably still out whether it was a good or bad thing.
cc--I always wondered who signed up for those 8:00 a.m. classes.
She just had her final BFA exit show at a gallery where she lives, with a huge turnout. Luckily I prepared food for twice as many as she had expected and we were all so proud.
She's now headed for Portland and damn it if I haven't been scouring the internet for cozy cold-weather down blankets and pillows, coats and woolen bits to send her...She may not need them. But I NEED to send them to her.
Amy--One of the best things my kids learned at college was the existence of Nutella. I'm in their debt for that one.
I guess we do that to soften the adjustment for them? I dunno, but I think she might still have some of the five(?) pound bag of oatmeal I bought for her two years ago. Ha ha.
Your story reminded me of my college years, I had to go to Thessaloniki, rent a house, buy a bed, a TV, a fridge, and so many more, to my family these were such a burden of expenses, and I felt so guilty for doing this..From this guilt I have never escaped and I have it in the back of my head, that I will pay back all the expenses I have caused.
Times have changed, and sorry for my saying, but you have the economic ability to give to your children all they want, out of true love for them.. I am feared for the time that although I will want to buy everything for the ones I love, I will not have this ability, and trully this is a scary thought to me. What I want to say, is that you have stood as a good mother in this case, and that you have your children such a beautiful gift...Rated.