Call your mother right now and say
This past weekend I played the mom role for real and it was brutal. My baby brother left for college this weekend and I went with my mom to help move him into this new major chapter of his life. While it was fun to explore a new city and spend some quality time with my little bro, I am thoroughly exhausted and physically sore.
Let’s start with the fact that while this maybe could have all been done in 24 hours, we dragged it into 2 ½ days. That is a lot of time that I, the mother, could have spent working, getting ready for school, or doing something for myself. We drove 5 hours from Las Vegas to Phoenix, and as the mother you are expected to drive which leaves no time for you to even day dream a little or nap. As soon as we arrived, ASU actually unloads your car for you and brings it to the room, which is such a blessing and probably saved us an hour or two so #blessed for ASU volunteers- y’all are real ones. After everything is dropped off into the room, it is up to the mother to remember what is packed in what box and where it should go in the room. Furniture almost always has to be moved, boxes need to be thrown away but directions and assembly papers cannot be discarded, everything needs a place, but you cannot just put that dresser wherever you want it because you are not the one living there. Trying to set an entire dorm room up while hearing “No, I don’t want that there!” or “Wait, where did the ___ go?” on repeat is my new, personal form of hell.
After a full day of physical labor, right when you want to kick your feet up and get some good food, you are brutally reminded of all of the little things your darling baby needs that they don’t even know they need. Your child needs notebooks, textbooks, pens, extra phone chargers, a whiteboard calendar, a desk lamp, and a stapler. When was the last time you bought a stapler? That’s what I thought. Then comes the really fun stuff like finding out how to access the Microsoft Word software that comes free to students, setting their phone alarms and mapping out where all of their classes are, discovering where to register their bike, and – my personal favorite – finding their parking spot in one of the 8 parking garages/lots on a campus that you have never been to, in a city that you are unfamiliar with.
While they are constantly pushing you out of their room so that they can be independent and make friends, you are running back and forth from the campus to Target to Bed Bath & Beyond and then back to campus only to realize that you forget something and have new returns to do because “This lamp kills my vibe.”
While this may sound like an endless back to school rant, my point is that our parents do all of this for us each year and never complain. Ever. They take on all of these responsibilities because as independent as we think we are, we would drown in the real world sea of responsibilities that we don’t even know we have. On top of all of this, parents have to deal with the emotional side of their baby moving out and moving on with life. We tend to have no sympathy towards this. I, personally, asked my mom to leave on an earlier flight when she moved me in because I wanted to be self-sufficient and get my college life started. How heartbreaking! She probably sobbed all the way home like I did when my baby brother put condoms in his dorm room. Do yourself a favor and call your family today and thank them for everything they do for you on a daily basis because chances are they still do things behind the scenes that we take for granted.