The Road Less Travelled

I’ve always loved a good road trip but my last one wasn’t at all that I expected. This road was unpredictable and not in the good ways a road trip should be. No stops at cute farmstands or antique/flea markets. No DQ runs just for the heck of it. In my opinion, there’s nothing better than a Dairy Queen Peanut Buster Parfait. Nope. None of that. Lots of dark tunnels where I couldn’t see my way through to the other side. I just had to trust the process and keep driving. It began when my daughter came to me with a deer in the headlights expression in her eyes and told me she needed to be moved out of her student housing by Friday evening. It was Thursday afternoon. Her college dorm room was 871 miles away from where we stood in our mango-colored kitchen, staring at each other blankly.

Two months earlier:

I flew to Miami with my son to visit his sister for Parents’ weekend. Jack was excited for the opportunity to get out of middle school for a couple days to see Sarah. I looked forward to seeing my girl and reliving college again. I prayed she was making friends and enjoying classes. My greatest hope was that she’d recovered from the trauma of her senior year of high school. Everyone’s year was rough that year. 2021 and Covid. Despite the obstacles and challenges, she persevered and graduated and was accepted to the University of Miami for their Marine Mammal Studies program. We’d turned a corner – no more potholes… no more metaphorical pile-ups.

After we arrived on campus, she told us she’d picked up an extra shift at The Rat (the Rathskeller, Miami’s on-campus bar/restaurant) and was working that night. We met there and watched as she bused tables and served. We enjoyed dinner, taking in the sights and sounds and smells of college life. Kids in bright orange and green Miami Hurricane jerseys strutted around, having just come from the big football game. Pods of families clustered, moving like millipedes, as their college kid led them around. I was a little sad because Caroline was too busy running food to tables to give us any kind of tour, but she seemed happy and was good at her job.

The next day when we met for breakfast, she informed us she picked up another work shift during the day. I wondered when she had time for homework, but I didn’t press. I was also disappointed that she opted to pick up shifts when we were visiting but I let it go. Her brother and I went on a speedboat tour around the city while she worked. We saw all the big celebrity mansions – Ricky Martin and Gloria Estefan. We marveled at the number of fancy sportscars whizzing through town in outrageous colors. We ate Cuban food where I had to dust off my rusty Spanish to place our order. We walked around Miami Beach, hitting up sneaker stores. And then we picked up Sarah and a friend for dinner.

The weekend flew by and before we knew it, we were back in New Orleans. It didn’t occur to me until later that we never attended a single Parents Weekend event. Not one. A few weeks later Sarah came home for Thanksgiving break.

A day before her flight back to Miami she came to us and said she was leaving school. She was struggling with classes and didn’t want to go back. Her father and I were floored. There’d been no word from her in the weeks and months she’d been at school that anything was wrong. I did have some misgivings after Parents Weekend when I didn’t hear much about her classes or professors. But I chose not to address it. I’ll admit I was used to walking on eggshells around her – especially have the strain of the previous year.

We tried to talk her into going back – just to finish out the semester. She was adamant that she couldn’t and wouldn’t do that. She was failing and had no intention of returning. We told her we’d find tutors. This started to feel like a repeat of her senior year when we’d spent hours on the phone with counselors and tutors trying to help her get through the last few months of classes. It was happening again and we didn’t understand why. She wasn’t on lock-down. She had access to her friends and teachers. And she had us.

Why was school not working? I couldn’t comprehend any of it and kept asking her what was going on.

She shut down.

Her senior year had been traumatic but I never understood the severity of what she went through until much later. She was in boarding school when Covid swept through the country and world. In the beginning of the pandemic, she came home for months and did on-line school. She closed herself in her room and often missed classes. We learned about that later when her advisor or teachers called us, concerned. She was isolated from her friends and teachers, and fretful parents did not help the situation. To add fuel to the firestorm of 2020-21, I was diagnosed with breast cancer and was undergoing treatment. When they say that God only gives you what you can handle, I respectfully disagree. This nearly broke our family. And I watched it break my child in two.

Later when Sarah was able to return to boarding school – it was under the caveat that distance boarders stay closed-up in their dorms. The administration even went to the extreme of putting shower curtains up as dividers in all the dorm rooms. Her roommate didn’t return to campus, choosing to finish school online from home. Sarah had no interest in that. She wanted to be closer to her friends and hoped that would make a difference. But she was placed in a dorm with younger students who were not in her friend group. She wasn’t allowed to visit day student friends on weekends, despite desperate letters and calls made by me and her friends’ parents who wanted to host her. Covid socked her school and its new headmistress in the face. No one knew how to handle things well and my child was kept in isolation for months. Only I had no idea what was happening until she told me a year later – when she realized she couldn’t do college.

The road we thought we were on, detoured and we had to find a new way to think about school, about our expectations for our children… about everything.

My husband and I grew up in a time when if you could afford to go to college, you went. You didn’t drop out. You did your best and you got your degree. And we both came from families where the concept of college was not considered a privilege. It was a requirement – a necessary requirement for a productive and fruitful life. I’m well aware this is not most people’s experience, but it was the world we both came from. And it had been knocked into our thick heads from the time we were born. And in turn, our children, thanks to their grandparents’ foresight and money, could attend college debt-free. A college education was a value and an experience we deemed necessary – a sign of success or at least a step in that direction. Why would you forego college if you could afford it?

My four years of college were transformative. I experienced so many firsts in college – the big things – drugs, sex and freedom. Freedom to fail and freedom to find a way to succeed – all on my own. I learned perseverance and how to ask for help when I needed it. I discovered a love of writing and decided I wanted to see the world. College led me to the Peace Corps, where I met my husband and where I decided to pursue a Master’s in Public Health. I wanted those same “Ah Ha – This is why I’m here” moments for my children. But when Sarah told me why she just couldn’t stay in school, I needed to listen. I had to trust her. She’d lived through something I’d never anticipated or experienced.

Who was I to tell her she was obligated to go to college just because we could afford it?

I was stubborn in wanting to fix this thing and I was heartbroken. I tried bargaining. I tried bribery. She held fast. Her dad did the same thing. When I think about it now, how much we’d tied her success and future happiness with the need for a college degree, I’m ashamed. She needed us to listen and to respect that she needed to do things differently.

The road got rocky and we needed to change gears to traverse this new terrain. We needed to get out of the Sedan and into a dune buggy. We were used to being the ones with all the answers and advice. We struggled to accept that we needed to learn from her – and not the other way around. We had to take a step back and re-think everything we’d held as truth.

Our daughter needed to navigate a different path. And believe me, she wasn’t the only one. And not just because of Covid. Covid may have been the catalyst but many families have grappled with the notion of higher education. Do you truly need a four-year degree to become successful in life… especially if that four-year degree is going to put you into debt for years?

I didn’t realize when I visited her at Miami that working at the Rat was her happy place. Serving customers and working in the service industry gave her a sense of accomplishment and a paycheck. I saw it as something to distract her from her studies. For her, it was meeting different people, making her own money and escaping the stress of classes and academic expectations.

Cut to early December 2020. Sarah and I hopped in the Honda Pilot and drove out that night – knowing it would be easier to get to Miami if we drove all night. And we did, sharing the driving. The road trip disappointment was that the service station platforms in Florida didn’t have coffee available at 3 a.m. when we really needed it. I was forced to chug down Starbucks overly-sweet bottled Frappuccino’s - God-awful stuff. We made it in time. We got her room packed up and she said goodbye to her friends. I won’t lie… I still had hopes she’d return the following semester or year.

It was bittersweet but we had a lot of time to talk on that road trip. She told me more about her academic struggles and how boarding school during lock-down gave her significant PTSD: panic attacks so severe she could barely breathe. And she had no one she trusted to call on for help. Not even us. She never told us because I was going through cancer treatment.

It’s four years later and Sarah lives in New Orleans in her own apartment with a roommate. She works as a hostess/server/bartender in the French Quarter and we share ownership of a spicy pitbull puppy named Josie. She works four to six days a week, respects her co-workers, mostly and has learned a lot. She knows how to turn away an unruly customer. She knows when she needs to ask for help. She makes a mean spicy margarita and can budget for rent, car payment and insurance, utilities and food for the week. No, it’s not a college education. No, it’s not the road we imagined. But it’s the road she’s on and she’s thriving. She bought her first car with money she saved and insisted on covering the insurance herself. She is fiercely independent and strong-willed.

When I look at this twenty-one year-old young woman, I’m in awe. I’m proud of her. She’s living life on her terms, no excuses. She comes by regularly for visits, for dinner or to treat us to dinner. She says she wants to go back to school at some point – but likely for a particular skill. She hasn’t decided what, but she knows we’ll support her when she does. She’s also interested in AmeriCorps or the Peace Corps. Maybe we’ve done something right.

In truth, she didn’t take the road less travelled. It seemed like it, in respect to her boarding school classmates. There are fewer college educated adults than not. A university education is a privilege many cannot afford. Some attend school part-time or they do it a few classes at a time, while working. There’s no wrong way and there are many who never attain higher education in the traditional sense.

I’m still hopeful she’ll find a program that works for her somewhere along the line. It won’t be the four-year experience I had and that’s okay.

I’m relieved she had the guts to tell us what she needed… for telling us no and sticking to her guns. She didn’t let us bully her into a decision that could have done more harm than good. And she gave us time to wrap our heads around it. It took lots of conversations and listening. But that’s the good stuff. We needed those conversations and more importantly, we needed to learn to listen – really listen. That’s not as easy as it sounds.

We’ve driven lots of miles on this new road and it’s not as rough as I thought it would be… a few hair-pin turns and some “proceed with caution” signs but we’re still driving. And so is she.

We’re just glad when she makes a stop in our driveway.