Oh, the places you'll go

 

Photo by Patrick Jones. S at Occoquan. Jul 2015.

In a summer of milestones, from graduation, to a first international solo (but with a group) trip, and now for the big move to college, we've reached the last day at home for Sophia. I've tried to think back what it felt like for me to make the same move from home to college, but my experience is totally different from hers, both in location and era. 

I drove myself and a car load of stuff about an hour and a half away, to Crawfordsville, Indiana, which is a small town, to attend a very small college. Sophia's high school is already bigger than many college campuses. She and her classmates experienced their 9th grade as a COVID year, and all the accompanying anxieties of that time, in a way that I did not in my formative high school years. The World Wide Web was brand new while I was in college, and now kids have a computer on their wrist or pocket and all the world's knowledge or tools to find it at their fingertips. As I type those words, now I hear "old man voice" in my head saying "back in my day...".

It really doesn't seem that long ago, I'm carrying Sophia along Santa Monica Beach, looking out over the water, and now we've reached the point where we're packing her things into the car and driving up to her next adventures.