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She's in
2007-12-18 - 9:17 a.m. So -- She got in! We're all sort of in shock, I think. The letter came yesterday. It was in a usps priority mailer. I felt it a little. There seemed to be a small envelope stuffed inside a big mailer. I called N, who was at E's house. "Yes?" she asked. She didn't come home. I waited around for a while, knitting a scarf. I got up and squished the envelope a few more times. Definitely a smaller envelope inside. I hoped I hadn't sounded too glum on the phone. I called her again. "Aren't you coming home?" She wanted me to pick her up, so I put the envelope on the seat beside me and drove up the hill. She got in the car. First we saw the letter saying there was no financial aid. This was confusing. We looked at it for a minute. "N," I said. "N, I think this means . . ." But she was fishing around inside the envelope. "Here's the letter we were supposed to start with," she said. It was the letter beginning, "Dear N, Congratulations!" So -- we're all in shock. I imagine it's a little like when the baby comes at 37 weeks, just before you've had a chance to waddle around like a hippo for a month desperately wanting the whole thing to be over. We have a huge, well-organized box of applications in process. She was finally getting into the groove of writing those essays, and it was actually sort of a positive experience -- she was thinking about what she wanted out of college. But now, it's all over! I also feel sort of badly for the New Orleans school, (who had also, by the way, given her an absolutely enormous scholarship. Hmmm.) They're making all kinds of changes that will definitely result in a better school, and N was thinking it might be kind of fun to be down there reconstructing ... Or there was the Minnesota school that seemed to have such a good sense of humor, and likewise the one in Ohio, and the kind woman from R in Portland who called with such a cheery voice to set up an interview, or beautiful H in upstate NY near K's aunt and the black and white cookie bakery . . . But I guess that's the way it is -- you choose one thing, and you close off a million other options. [K and I are also, well, N too, contemplating financial ruin. As you do.] But it is amazing and wonderful. I think I really had not even dared hope. So now we can make her hats and gloves for Christmas, and my mother can buy her a woolen blanket (I'm not kidding -- there have been discussions!). It does make the fact of her going away seem much more fact-like. She really will go away, which is good, but also a little, umm, terminal. And I am both horrified at how far away she's going, but also happy. Somehow the fact the she really is going to NE makes me much more at peace with the fact of living in California. Somehow it makes it feel like it isn't so far away. Which makes being in CA seem less like a sentence and more like an adventure. Okay -- I have to shower and makes cookies for a work-type event. How do other people do all this? I can't. I guess I should have made these cookies last night, but there was dinner, and then I guess I knit a scarf, which is a gift that has to be mailed, so there was some pressure on that as well. Hmmm. Okay. Off I go.
find me! - 2008-02-12 |
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