I Suck At This

“I suck at this.”

I slammed my pen down and dropped my head into my hands in frustration. It was senior year and I was applying to colleges. My grades were just okay but I did surprisingly well on the SAT exams. I only applied to four schools because the application cost was ridiculous and I, and my parents, could only afford so many. Why does it cost money to apply to a university? What a dumb — that’s a different rant for a different day. My parents forced me to be choosy, narrow it down to four likely candidates to continue my higher education. Two schools I wanted to go to, one my parents chose (the most affordable happened to be the closest as well), and a safety school that I was assured admission. But grades and test scores were not enough! Oh no, these prestigious, middle of the road, far from Ivy League Universities all required application essays as well. Basically long form begging restructured into a thesis statement as to why, if granted admission, I would become the next great Golden Eagle, or Blue Devil, or Crusader, or Leatherneck, to go out into the world and change it for good while continuing to remember my yearly alumni donations. Please let me in, all powerful gatekeepers of education, I hold promise for great things, accomplishments unmatched by any of my peers from the other medium-sized mid-conference local universities! I swear it!

“What was that?” My father looked up from his stack of paperwork and unpaid bills to chime in from the kitchen counter.

“I said I suck at this,” my head still heavy in my hands, seeking sympathy for my sulking.

“Well that does sound like you,” my father said. I turned my head still resting on my hands to see his wry smile. He looked like the ‘wink’ emoji but with a mustache.

“Thanks dad, always helpful,” I resumed my sulk.

“Alright alright, let me see what you got,” my dad sat next to me and grabbed the notebook from underneath my face. As he read, he vocally reacted to the text blurting out unwarranted laughter, pretending to sob, several elongated ‘ohs’ and ‘ahs’ and one, 'Oh no not Timmy! He was my favorite.'

“Dad, if you’re not going to take this seriously I don’t want your help.”

“Well I really don’t see the problem. This is good. You’re a good writer. I think any school would just be plain stupid not to take you. Especially after reading what happened to Timmy!”

“Stop!” I shouted into my palms.

“No you stop,” he snapped back with another smile.

“Ms. Krapp said the essays are almost more important than the SATs and that they’re the last chance we have to show the admissions board who we really are! It’s important, and stupid, and I hate it, and I suck at it.”

“Your teacher’s name is Miss Crap?”

“Dad! She’s the guidance counselor and yes but it’s not spelled the same.”

“Poor woman.”

“I’m going to start over,” I went to rip the page from the notebook when my fathers hand fell down on the paper stopping me.

“You don’t suck at it, this is good. And even if you did suck at it, that’s good too.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said with noticeable annoyance.

“Sure it does,” my father got up from the table and moved back to the counter with his stack of seemingly endless paperwork “To suck at something means you did something. You can’t suck without completion.”

“Dad?”

“Yeah, ok, that sounds like innuendo. Unintended, I swear. But you get what I mean? For you to suck at something, for you to be truly bad at anything you try, means that you did it. You did that thing you set out to do. And that in itself is great!”

“I guess so…”

“Look, there’s a lot of people that don’t do anything, their entire lives. They don’t try anything, they just kind of exist. Sulking with their head in their hands, just wandering aimlessly trying nothing, telling themselves they ‘suck at it.’ But they don’t. They don’t suck at it because they aren’t doing anything to suck at. See? I’m not helping am I?” I hesitated for a joke as he smiled in my direction, but one didn’t come.

“Yeah I get it.”

“Here, this is what I’m trying to tell you…I hope you suck at literally everything. Because if you do, that means you’ve done it. You’ve followed through and finished. You failed with aplomb,” his voice went up and took on a slightly British accent at the end, in an attempt to sound smart.

“I just want it to be good,” I said flipping to a clean sheet in the notebook and finally lifting my face from my palms.

“Yeah well that’s not really how it works. Most of the time, like the absolute majority of the time, you won’t be good at all. You will be pretty bad. Or ‘suck’ as you put it. You might even be —,” he gasped dramatically loud to ensure my complete attention, “the worst. You will completely and totally stink. Even worse than you do now.”

“I don’t stink!”

“But you may someday. And that’s going to be great. It's the only way you ever get to be good,” he flashed another smile. I think he was looking for some sort of nod of appreciation for his wise words. A trophy of good parenting. I turned back to my notebook and started over.

_________________________

It was unseasonably cold for mid-August, and per usual we were well behind schedule. Your mother was a basket case, and that’s putting it nicely. Her and I had all the discussions we could, all the breakdowns we could handle, and while we were both brimming with pride and excitement for you, we were equally overcome by fear and hesitation. I was waiting by the car watching in wonder as Glenn, the neighbor across the street, scuffled about his yard assembling Halloween decorations. It was oddly calming.

“A bit early isn’t it, Glenn?” I shouted leaning against the back of the van.

“Oh, well yeah I suppose it is. The kids love it though. And I can’t hear Brandon practicing the saxophone from out here,” Glenn said holding a fake tombstone that read the words ‘he donned a cape, and we wondered why, he jumped from the building, thinking he could fly.’

“Ah right. I understand. We went through six years of cello lessons. You grow numb to it after the thousandth time hearing Yankee Doodle.”

“I can only hope,” Glenn said resuming his mock graveyard assembly as your mom came bursting out from the front door carrying two more suitcases.

“What are those?” I turned to her as she struggled, offering little to no help.

“These are the last of them,” she said through short pants of breathlessness as she dropped the bags at my feet.

“Well where is she? We should have left an hour ago.”

I lifted both bags into the back of the van and stacked them on top of other bags. For an 18 year old you had a lot of stuff. Surely all things you’d swear you couldn’t live without. I had a remote fear that the inside of our house was now completely empty as you had claimed everything as your own and packed it to take with you. The thought of it made me happy. Maybe it meant you’d miss us.

“Is today the big day?” Glenn shouted from across the way, now carrying a plastic skeleton draped in a black cloak like the Grim Reaper.

“Sure is! Fashionably late, per usual,” I shouted back.

“What is he doing? It’s August.” Your mother leaned in to side bar with me. Glenn was a nice man, good family, but an odd duck that your mom and I grew accustomed to monitoring from across the way for bewildered enjoyment.

“Brandon is taking saxophone lessons,” I responded.

“Hi Glenn!”

“Hey Meg!” Glenn responded by waving the skeletons hand in our direction and dropping his voice to sound scary.

_________________________

You were quiet most of the three hour drive, eyes locked on your phone as your fingers manically tapped about from one text or app to the next. Your mother spent the majority of the ride espousing her exhaustive list of do’s and don’t’s only stopping twice to check that her messaging wasn’t falling on deaf years and once to tell me to slow down. She was the worrier, and I hated being late. The gravity of this moment seemed lost on you, or at least smaller than it was for us. You seemed unchanged, operating as if today was just an ordinary Wednesday in the life of a rapidly aging teenager. You had looked forward to this day for at least two years and had picked your school of choice as sophomore. I was proud of you, your mother was too. Neither of us had any clue what we wanted to do or be or where we wanted to go when we were your age, but you did. You were confident, you were strong and assertive, qualities you must have gained from a stranger because they were not readily available in your shared bloodline. You were often unfazed by great change. This was merely just another step in the direction you were already headed. I may have been behind the wheel, but you had been steering for some time. For me, today was monumental. You were our first. We learned all our lessons on you, and there were many. I surely learned more from the first four years of your life than you were about to in the next four years of yours. But the mistakes were fun, and scary, and everything your mother and I hoped them to be. And in the end the result was a couple of broken bones, a few moments of warranted chaos, a smattering of well fought shouting matches, and you. The strongest, most well-adjusted, confident young woman the world had ever seen. Our crowning achievement was collaboration of mistakes and miscues that somehow turned out all right. We did good, I thought to myself, exiting the expressway as the knot in my throat doubled in size.

_________________________

Your first item on the agenda was to check in, get your keys, and locate Amanda, your friend and now roommate. The campus was a wild scene of kids racing around with phones in hand tea potting with excitement on the cusp of newly achieved freedom. Some 20-somethings sat about the patches of yard outside the main student union watching the new recruits wander aimlessly eager with blind enthusiasm.

“I don’t like the look of them,” your mother said conspicuously motioning to a pack of boys sitting around a couple of park benches laughing and mocking the dozens of freshman wondering around.

“Yeah, should we report them? I bet they have —,” I let out a dramatic gasp of shock, “drugs! They look like they’re on the weed.” I joked to calm my own nerves and further stir your mother’s.

“Here she comes, get shit together,” your mother swung her arm smacking me in the chest.

“Jesus sheriff, settle down. This is going to be fine,” I lied to her, and myself. We needed to lie so we didn’t embarrass you in front of the pack of weed boys. If we had let our actual emotions take control your mother would be violently scolding some frat boy about ogling young women and I’d be sobbing in the fetal position on the sidewalk outside the student union begging God to roll back time 18 years so I could right all the wrongs I made. But there you were, bouncing down the stairs, carefree, confident, with a visible spark of excitement and freedom shooting from your beautiful hazel eyes. Maybe we made no mistakes after all. You were perfect.

Your dorm was much like mine when I went to school. If it wasn’t a symbol for the excitement of starting your college education, being free from your parents home for the first time in your life, and the proverbial doorstep of your adulthood, it could have easily been mistaken as a prison cell. But I didn’t notice that when I first arrived at college, and neither did you. You and Amanda were bouncing from the walls with joy as your mother and I, along with Amanda’s parents, unloaded your life’s belongings and tirelessly wrought for just one more moment of our child’s attention.

_________________________

It was your mother’s idea, the Irish exit. She was more composed than I thought she would be, and far more composed than I was. She said to me while still in your new home, “come help me with the last bag in the car,” as she motioned her face to the door.

We walked down the hallway, into the elevator, and then outside into what we earlier learned was referred to as “the quad” and back to the car.

“There’s not another bag."

"I didn't think so."

"I just can’t do it. The long goodbye thing, let’s just go. I hated it when my parents ropped me off the first day. I just wanted the freedom and for them to leave. Let’s leave her be, I’ll call her from the car in a little bit.”

“But — are you sure? This is it.”

“This isn’t it,” your mother said as she opened the passenger door and sat down.

Spinning with every emotion my brain could create, in a state of parental shock I hadn’t felt since the first time I put you on the bus to school at age five, I followed suit. I sat in the driver seat, hands on the wheel, just staring into the abyss of a future that had you living three hours away. I struggled to find the motivation to leave. I had a remote hope that you would run through the dormitory building doors straight to the van and beg us to stay. We could work out some weird sleeping arrangement, or just force Amanda to get another room, and we could walk you to class every day, and make sure you ate enough even though the food at the cafeteria was worse than you expected. I could help you with your Lit classes and Mom with the sciences; we could approve or disapprove of every boy that tried to talk to you, or you talking to them. We could protect you from the inevitable mean girls at the sorority, or better yet talk you out of joining a sorority all together. We’d promise to turn a blind eye the first time you came home too late, or too drunk, or too not alone. I could hold your hair as your mother explained the consequences of alcohol on a teenage brain. We could make you soup and run to the store for Gatorade and french fries the next day. We’d make sure that you stayed focused, and confident, and strong. We’d promise to allow time for fun, though we’d struggle to let you to make your own mistakes, because we knew better since we already made them ourselves. But you wouldn’t want to hear it. It didn’t matter, you never returned to the van.

“Are you ready for this?” Your mom reached her arm out and rubbed the back of my head and turned to look at me with eyes that questioned my ability to leave you behind.

“Yeah. I just suck at it,” I said as we drove away.