Over the River and Through the Woods

Well, ok, over the Grand Canyon and through the airports . . .

to graduation we go.

The Lovely Daughter graduates on Sunday. We leave for the great state of Oregon on Thursday, where we hope to see Lisa, the Columbia River Gorge, Cannon Beach, and ~ oh yeah, a few important events at Willamette University!

It will be tough, to make this trip that for four years I had looked forward to sharing as a family of five. But it will be wonderful, too, to help our beautiful girl celebrate friendships and achievements that began with that fateful hurricane four years ago.

Back in a week or so ~

Katrina'd

When the lovely daughter headed off to college last fall, it was with the same anticipation and eagerness that most freshmen feel. A new part of the country. A dorm, a roommate, classmates from everywhere. Classes in subjects always just out of reach in high school -- psychology, philosophy, Italian. A new beginning.

I couldn't go. As a teacher, I had to begin my work year at the same time that she did. So I stayed home and commiserated with a friend in the same boat, while our husbands accompanied our daughters thousands of miles from home. For my husband and sons, who would not go back to college for a few more weeks, it was supposed to be a nice little family vacation. There was a lot of laughing just before they left over the fact that the boys would turn 21 just after they left the French Quarter and Bourbon Street -- but at least they would get to see what they would be missing.

Well, we all know what happened.

After leaving most of her clothing and belongings in her dorm room and spending three days in Baton Rouge and two more back on the road, the lovely daughter turned to me and said,

"Mom, I did everything I was supposed to do. I worked hard and got good grades. I did the SATs and ACTS and APs. I visited colleges and did interviews and wrote essays. I filled out an endless series of forms. I got my letters and I made my choice and I went shopping and we drove 1000 miles, and my college...DISAPPEARED. What do you do when your college just disappears?"

Now there's a question to which I had always wanted to know the answer.

At first she thought she'd just stay home and take classes at a nearby university for the semester. "That was pretty traumatic," she admitted -- an attitude she retained for about an afternoon. By the end of the day she had remembered: "I never wanted to go to college in-state. I don't want to go to college in-state now. Do you think I should call all the colleges to which I was admitted?" And by the next afternoon she was settled: Willamette in Oregon would be her next stop, with a full tuition waiver as Willamette's contribution to the hurricane relief effort.

(I used to think it was a little strange that kids sent applications to such disparate kinds of colleges. That was until I accompanied one of my sons to an Admitted Students Week-end, where it seemed that everyone we met, including my own indecisive offspring, was wranging over the choice between Big Bad City University of Chicago and tiny, bucolic Northfield, Minnesota's Carleton College. Just like the rest of us, teenagers are struggling with the who-am-I-and-where-do-I-want-to-be-in-life question. So when my daughter's final two choices emerged as boistrous and wild Tulane and New Orleans and tiny and somewhat more placid Willamette and Salem, Oregon, I was prepared to go with the flow.)

I can't say enough good things about Willamette University. The lovely daughter arrived after freshmen orientation was over and classes had begun to a delightful roommate, a complete set of bedding, a welcome basket from food services, and a welcome letter from the president of the college. Her advisor got her into courses the next morning, the bookstore could not have been m0re helpful, and she was on her way. Over the course of the next three months she made a great group of friends, did a terrific job academically, played intramural soccer, volunteered at the Salem animal shelter, watched Gray's Anatomy on Sunday nights, and just generally had the best first semester of college that any of my three children have experienced.

In January: Back to Tulane. This time it was a little more difficult -- she had already built a college life elsewhere. The roommate with whom she had corresponded back in August had never shown up then, and decided not to return for the second semester. Katrina permeated the atmosphere, the news, the consciousness of everyone at every level. In its wake was a beginning of a semester was full of the triumphant sense of survival and the energy of renewal.

The girl dove in -- studying conscientiously, making friends, singing in the college choir, volunteering in the 9th Ward, dating a little, and finding a new Gray's Anatomy group. But it wasn't the same -- she had left her heart behind at Willamette. And there wasn't anyone to talk with about that. Most of her classmates, who had spent their first semesters in college situations they disliked, were thrilled to find themselves finally beginning their long awaited first semester at Tulane. And the size of the school was a bit daunting in and of itself -- she found that she often met people whom she liked, and then never laid eyes on them again. At Willamette, her natural reticence had been thwarted by the tiny campus, where she couldn't help but run into everyone she knew every day.

I watch each of my children struggle with the choices of young adulthood, and I try to stay out of it. (Really, guys, I do! You have no idea how MUCH I leave unsaid!) I worked hard to keep myself out of this one. Not that I knew what the answer was. Of course, I had some views, which I restrained myself from announcing. The Willamette admission counselor was a candid and forthright woman who easily acknowledged the difficulty of the circumstances: the allegiance to an original dream, the sense that there might be more opportunites at a larger school, the feeling of responsibility toward the renewal of New Orleans, the brevity of the experience there, all balanced against the equally brief but undeniably satisfying experience at Willamette. The Tulane advisor, in contrast, did not respond to an email that should have alerted her to the fact that a major decision was in the works.

My comment, when asked point blank what I thought: You succeed in life when you are surrounded and supported by people who care about you and whom you care about. It doesn't matter how large or small, how prestigious or unknown, how near or far, the institution or locale. What matters is whether you can make a place for yourself and find "your people" there. We will love you and support you no matter where you decide that is.

A visit back to Oregon over Easter week-end clinched the deal. Within a matter of days my daughter had a roommate, a room, and a schedule of classes for next fall at Willamette. She sounded happier and more settled than she had in weeks.

I can hardly wait to see her tonight. She sounds so adult, so at peace with herself, on the telephone. I think that she has had a profound experience of finding out who she is, what matters to her, and how she can live most happily and productively. Not a bad beginning for 18.

Tulane Revisited

On my last morning in New Orleans, I went back to Tulane and wandered around the campus by myself for awhile, trying to get a feel for my daughter's new home. The evening before, I had visited the Audubon Park across the street -- an absolutely lovely, manicured, but somewhat natural area, lined on either side by beautiful homes, and host in the slanted light of early evening to runners, cormorants, and fulvous whistling-ducks. I didn't have a camera with me to record my life-bird of the week, but the next morning I did try to compile a record of the Tulane campus. Don't forget that you can click on the pictures to enlarge them

Tulane University is in possession of something that the rest of our country lacks: a visionary and insightful leader of extraordinary skill. As a result, the campus looks reasonably acceptable, the students are housed and already volunteering all over the city, the classes are moving forward, and the mail system is only a minor disaster.

I think that my first picture is of an original Newcomb College building. Newcomb was the women's school, Tulane College was the men's and, until Katrina, they retained separate identities for administrative purposes. For all obvious intents and realities they have been merged into Tulane University for some time, with Newcomb having lost most of its identity to the men's school, just as Radcliffe and Pembroke have to Harvard and Brown -- but it is only with Katrina that the final blow has been dealt to whatever individuality they did maintain. Although I'm not sure exactly where Newcomb begins and ends in a geographic sense, it's easy to see from the rough outlines of that portion of the campus what a lovely southern college for women it must have been. I found some humor in my daughter's enrollment last spring in Newcomb -- she had steadfastly resisted all my efforts to interest her in eastern women's colleges and then, somewhat by accident, found herself a student at a southern one. With sororities, no less! And now I feel saddened by Newcomb's demise; her diploma, should she decide to stay, will read "Tulane University" only.

The fourth picture, by the way, is a little present for Carol, a proud graduate and loyal alumna of Newcomb College.

I tossed the second picture in to demonstrate that, while Katrina may be somewhat responsible for the effect, frat houses tend not to look like the gracious buildings maintained by southern women's colleges, regardless of the circumstances. The cardboard sign on the second floor says, "Yes, We're Open," a familiar enough message around New Orleans, but certainly an important beacon to college students on a Saturday evening.

The third image illustrates the center of the Tulane Campus. I myself am not a fan of the combination of yellow brick and yellow grass, but I am confident that the grass will return to its original pre-Katrina green at some point in time. And the yellow bricks, which I consider particularly ugly, are at least bolstered by a humorous story. It seems that at some point in time, the same architect was designing clusters of buildings for both Tulane and Vanderbilt. The bricks for each school's buildings were shipped to the other by mistake, and the universities agreed that they would not bother with an exchange. From what I hear, the yellow ones would have been much more in keeping with the Vanderbilt campus as a whole. All I know is that I wish they were anywhere but Tulane.

And finally, the last image, with a student running alongside one of the buildings more aligned with my taste in Gothic university architecture, honed by my own alma mater and my son's years at Chicago, represents what was truly a delightful sight to me on that early Sunday morning: a campus at peace, a campus on which students who had adapted to extraordinary circumstances all over the country were finally able to engage in ordinary activities in the place they call home.

Respite

Southeastern Louisiana is not all turmoil and devastation. Egrets and herons still stalk the bayous, and chickadees and warblers still flit among the cypress and palmettos.

I'm headed out of town to visit family and take a look at an employment opportunity, and I'm returning Saturday to a stack of papers to grade and a Sunday presentation on Ignatian spirituality for our church adult education class, a church luncheon, and the annual meeting.

So it will be a few days before I pick up my New Orleans series again. If you haven't read it, I hope you'll look back at my week's writing. I'm not participating in NOLA rebuilding, but I'm trying to do what I can by sharing the story as I witnessed it. Please share a comment if any of the entries makes an impact on you.

And a minor update: my daughter seem energized by her first week at Tulane. She's thrilled that her urban sociology class will offer her a chance to do fieldwork in the neighborhoods of her new city along with opportunities for service learning with local agencies. I'm thinking she's doing just fine.

Tulane University Reopens

I'm going to start my New Orleans series with the event for which we were there: the reopening of Tulane University. Readers of Midlife Matters know that my daughter, like most other freshmen, was there only a few hours last August before the Katrina evacuation, which was expected to last four days. In the four months that passed before they could return, Tulane students attended nearly 600 other colleges and universities, in many, if not most, cases with tution waivers that enabled badly needed dollars to stay at Tulane.

The campus itself, on higher ground than much of New Orleans, was badly damaged but not devastated. Four months later, much restoration works remains ahead, but the buildings are functioning and it is possible to imagine the beauty that must have marked the quadrangles of live oaks, magnolias, and green grass. Far more devastating has been the loss of several programs, cut in the wake of the Katrina-driven budgetary crisis. And worse than that, the loss of many faculty and staff homes, neighborhoods, and livelihoods.

Nevertheless, they came back -- over 85% of the freshmen who had had to begin their college careers elsewhere -- to a rousing convocation last Thursday. The auditorium was packed as a jazz band marched and danced down the center aisle, followed by the banners symbolizing each of the Tulane University colleges, the key members of the administration and, finally and to a spontaneous and rousing standing ovation, University President Scott Cowen. The last time that Dr. Cowen appeared on the convication stage, he was wearing Bermuda shorts and urging students and parents to hightail it out of town. This time, bedecked in his full academic regalia and wiping tears from his eyes, he presided over the rebirth of a university that he must have more than once suspected might never come to pass.

You can read the Tulane version of the event and see more photos here. From a personal standpoint, I will add that this was my first trip to New Orleans and I went, not because I thought my daughter needed two parents for her third attempt at beginning college, but because I wanted to be a witness to history. And I was never disappointed. Scott Cowen has made some hard, hard decisions in the past months, some of which have engendered further confusion, loss, and heartbreak for students, families, and faculty in departments that have been eliminated. But there is no question in my mind that Tulane University would no longer be in existence had it not been for his vision and determination, and the tireless effort he has made ever since he pulled his staff together by text-messaging when cell phones failed and paddled his canoe out of the building where he weathered the storm. It must have been quite a moment for him to stand on that podium and look at the freshmen families whose return he and his extraordinary administration, faculty, staff and grounds crews had engineered.

The rest of orientation was -- well, like and unlike freshmen orientations. Freshmen families were feted on a riverboat cruise on the Mississippi, a trip I had never expected to take, and at a party at the Audubon Zoo, one of the first NOLA instituitons to reopen after the hurricane. We got lost and frustrated on our attempts to pick up hangers, a surge protector, and toothpaste, and managed to miss all the information events scheduled for parents. The lovely daughter has had her challenges: she lost her wallet in a movie theatre the night before orientation, creating a series of headaches that will take months to repair, inasmuch as she is now 1000 miles from our own Bureau of Motor Vehicles, and she is deeply missing her first semester friends and feeling a bit isolated in her sadness. Most of the freshmen went to hometown schools, had less than desirable experiences, and are thrilled without reservation to be back at Tulane, but she went to her second-choice college, one that she would have happily attended in the first place, had a wonderful semester there, and has very mixed feelings about this new transition. Thankfully she is a resilient, observant, and thoughtful young woman, willing to put herself on the line and fully capable of making her own decisions (woe to the person who tries to intervene!), so I am sure she will figure out the right path for herself.

We did make it onto a city tour bus, and I did make my own journeys south of and around a bit of New Orleans, so there is more to come in the next few days on history, architecture, and the everpresent and overwhelming wake of Katrina.

Unexpected Everything

One of the first things you discover when you have children is that you will be happier if you abandon all expectations. Nothing will ever go according to plan again, and your vision of control is little more than fantasy. Such realities perhaps become apparent to parents of multiples more quickly than to most other parents, but they do come to all of us, sooner or later.

College? Now THAT seemed somewhat under control. A Herculean task, to be sure, but a manageable one, as long as you do not mistake your own completely unbiased and adoring view of your child for the more jaundiced one that might be taken by admissions committees. A couple of reaches, sure -- but on the whole you and your child try to figure out what her realistic options might be and arrange things so that when the letters come, there are more acceptances than rejections and at least some of them offer something enticingly green. She makes her choice, she refrains from the kind of idiotic behavior that could get her expelled from high school in May, and she goes off to college.

So who thought about a hurricane?

Nope, not me. I just laughed at the "Personal Hurricane Emergency Preparedness" information that came along with the phone cards and post office box numbers and refrigerator orders.

Why would a woman who had to single-handedly evacuate three children under four from the house late one night when the church next door burst into flames EVER laugh at the possibility of disaster?

What can I plead? Undying optimism?

Well. My daughter and her father are back in NOLA this afternoon. Both of them, of course, have their phones turned off, so if something worse than Katrina has happened I don't know about it yet. I assume they're exploring and I hope they're safe. Tomorrow she'll get a look at her new dorm room and will learn whether her clothes and bedding survived the past four months, and then she will, once again, begin her career at Tulane.

She has certainly grieved the loss of Willamette, her first semester host school, and her wonderful group of friends there. But last night she was online purusing the array of volunteer and rebuilding opportunties available in New Orleans and wondering how she was ever going to choose what to do. I think she'll probably be all right.

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PS: I'm flying down tomorrow and I'm staying till Sunday. "You're not planning to hang out with me all the time?" asked the lovely daughter. Are you kidding? My cameras are primed and I have hundreds of photographs to take. I plan to see as much of NOLA and southeastern Louisiana as I can. More next week!

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PPS: They called! And here's the first report: No, it's not the NOLA they visited a year ago. Trolley cars? Gone. Street lights? Nope. Traffic lights? Mostly down. My daughter says it probably would be depressing, but there are lots of people around. French Quarter: There, but very quiet. Hotel? Sheets covering the windows, room ceiling pulled down, no hallway wallpaper anywhere, endless evidence of blown-out windows and water damage. "Spartan, " says my husband. However, there are lots of parents and students wandering around. My daughter does not sound the least bit deflated.

To my utter dismay, they also report that the President (of the United States) is coming to New Orleans tomorrow. Honestly. This administration's contribution to the recovery of a great American city equals less than zero. How dare he show his face just when the colleges -- among the few institutions that have made real headway, and almost completely on their own steam -- are re-opening? No one needs a presidential entourage impinging upon things tomorrow. Let the university communities have their day in the sun.

Countdown: One Week To Go

Freshman orientation at Tulane University begins one week from today. They are calling it "Orientation Deja Vu" since most of the freshmen were only there for a few hours the first time around. I posted the following on a college website tonight:

I called Housing today to try to find out my daughter's situation. They say she is assigned to the same room, her stuff should be there, they have no idea if the washers and dryers work, she will probably be assigned a roommate from the housing waiting list (which she expected, since her roommate never materialized and did not respond to phone calls post-Katrina), and she might be able to find out who it is if she calls them late tomorrow, and then she might be able to make contact through the Facebook. The woman I spoke to sounded completely frazzled and said they do not have access to the housing database and are working off an Excell spreadsheet.

The lovely daughter is cautiously optimistic. She says that she and her roommate last semester discussed how, after all the schools go through to match roommates, their assignment was completely random and could not have been more perfect. (Her roommate at her host school had also had a roommate who just didn't show up.)

No info about books ot anything else that might be different; we are hoping that her ID, room key, and PO Box are all still hers and functioning. Clearly we all have an adventure ahead of us.

Sccrreeeeeeekkkkk!

The View From Above

(Chicago from the Hancock Tower)

I have no idea what sounds a gannet makes. I am guessing that the title hereof works, though, as a sound of triumph: my final exam is done!

What would you like to know about Ignatian spirituality? Just ask. No jokes about Dominicans in lieu of will be entertained.

We have written about 80 pages for this class this past semester. That's a lot of pages -- five or six pages a week which, when you think that each page represents two or three hours of work -- well, that's a lot of reading and thinking and writing for people who have actual lives outside the classroom. All behind me now, though, so I feel quite sanguine about the whole enterprise.

And actually kind of bubbly -- no, not my usual MO -- but now I can think about Christmas! One of my friends "did" her house last week-end -- cleaned for two days and then put up the tree -- and commented how she didn't mind the work at all because it all looks and smells so wonderful. Well, I will miss out on the smells, since I am lacking that sense (makes having pets so much more tolerable) but I am for sure looking forward to how things will look. And just in time to enjoy, since son numero uno arrives from Chicago tonight, if he remembers to get on his plane which, if you know anything about University of Chicago students, you understand is not guaranteed.

And yes, feeling a little sad and troubled, too. When is there NOT sadness in the air? The news out of Tulane University, my daughter's erstwhile and we hope continuing college, yesterday was all bad, in the short-run sense -- undergraduate college reorganization, faculty terminations, the med school closed for the rest of the year, several majors and Ph.D. programs getting the axe. I retain the utmost respect for Scott Cowen, the indefatiguably optimistic and driven president of the university, but he and his board have had to make some tough, tough decisions that have left many young people reeling yet again.

I happened to be on a parents' message board yesterday when another mom mentioned that her daughter was down there and IN my daughter's dorm as we were posting. I had high hopes that she might be able to take a peek and see whether the lovely daughter's possessions are still there, but in the end she couldn't make any headway; the first floor of the dorm is completely torn up. Not the most comforting news for a mother whose child will be moving in in 32 days.

Most of the country has no idea what is and is not going on in New Orleans. The President and Congress have turned their backs; it is up to the private sector and the individuals who want to make something happen to see that it does. We will be trying, however unexpectedly, to do our part, when we settle our tiny, self-possessed, and determined offspring into her dorm on what we hope is high ground above Lake Ponchetrain. The Tulane student population will increase the population of NOLA by twenty percent; I have a feeling some people down there will be happy to see those kids return.

First, however, I will be glad to see one of them back here in another week.

Transitions

I have two of them to write about:

Two weeks from tomorrow my daughter will be home, and a month later she will leave again -- off to college for the THIRD time.

In August, she left with high hopes and a heart full of optimism for her freshman year of college at Tulane and for her life in a new city. She got blown hither and yon by Katrina, showed up back home minus most of her belongings, reoriented herself, and three days later was off for her freshman year of college at Willamette.

("Mom," she said when she got home, "I did everything I was supposed to do. I worked hard, got good grades, visited schools, took SATs, filled out forms and wrote essays and got recommendations, sorted through my acceptances, made a decision, graduated from high school, went to Linens 'N Things, packed up and drove 1000 miles -- and my college DISAPPEARED. What am I supposed to do with THAT?"

"Sweetheart, I have no idea," I responded. "No one does. But we'll figure it out." And we did. And we got on a plane bound for Portland. )

She has been so lucky. She arrived to a room with linens provided by Residential Services, goodies provided by Food Services, a welcome letter from the college president, and a roommate thrilled to meet her. Professors made room in their classes and gave her time to catch up on the week's work she had missed. She joined an intramural soccer team and started volunteering at the Salem Animal Shelter. She exchanged visits with one of her lifelong best friends who attends Reed, an hour from Willamette. She spent what looks from the photos to have been a delightful Thanksgiving with her roommate's family in southern Oregon.

And in two weeks it will all be over.

I could shout my pride in this child to the rooftops. She is a model of resiliency and cheerful adaptation. She has made wonderful friendships at Willamette, but she is looking forward to another start at Tulane, more new friends, new classes, and a chance to assist in the rebuilding of a city. Her attitude toward a college experience that is looking nothing like the one she had planned on is one of total aplomb.

But I will admit to some trepidation. I think it will be really hard. The transition from high school to college is something of a challenge in and of itself -- the end of one lifestyle, the reordering of relationships, the beginning of a new approach, and the creation of new bonds -- and now for these NOLA college kids, the same transition all over again, only a few months after the last one. When I looked at the Thanksgiving pictures, I wanted to cry -- the girls have become such good friends, and instead of three more years together, they get two weeks.

I posted something similar to this wail on a Tulane parents board and got little sympathy. Fair enough to call me on excessive hyperbole in the face of the suffering still faced by most NOLA residents. But I also realized from the responses that my daughter really has been the recipient of incredible generosity and good fortune. I would not be so sorry about her departure from Willamette had it not been such a positive experience for her.

As for my own transition, from my beloved AOL journal to this one -- well, bear with me. I have a tremendous amount of work to do in the next two weeks and the challenges of a new system are too time-taxing for me to undertake right now. I think I need a full day to move my life from AOL to my other server, and another full day to really set up shop here. I just have to remember that I had a steep learning curve at AOL as well, and it was a long time before I could create full-fledged entires there.

If my daughter can move back and forth across the country with so little consternation, I guess I can switch screens.