Tomorrow Tyler is officially finished with his first year of college. I can still feel the lump in my throat and the stinging of the tears as we drove away from Emporia that hot, humid day last August. I thought my heart was going to stop beating, but, as is evidenced by this post, that did not happen.
The Confession: It really wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Actually, it was kind of weird how quickly Ron and I leapt into Empty Nest mode. We could eat dinner at 7:30 any night of the week. We didn't have to wait up until the wee hours of the morning for Tyler to get home and could go to bed early (and by early I mean before 1:00 a.m.). We were pretty much free to do what we pleased (!) when we pleased (!) and it was really very nice.
For Tyler, the adjustment to a small town came slowly. I grew up in a small town (36,000) and went to college in an even smaller town (15,000), but it wasn't that much of an adjustment for me. Going from KC to Emporia was a fairly big culture shock for Tyler. He was used to having a dozen or more places to hang out and Emporia's offerings paled in comparison. At first. But then we heard him talking about a place called Java Cat (how could that NOT be cool), taking rides in the country, riding around looking at the animals in the zoo, and, more recently, going to "The Lake." It sounds exactly like my college experience (we hung out at "The Rock" "The Pits" "The Pines" "Broken Bridge" and "The Haunted House").
It will be interesting to see how these next few months unfold. Stay tuned . . .
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