College Move-In Day From Hell

The dish soap was really the final straw. I’d driven 14½ hours across the country with my college-bound son, the car filled to the roofrack with spiral notebooks, toiletries, sweatshirts and khakis, new blue sheets, a room fan, two boxes of Poptarts, and a giant grey pillow chair called The Big Joe, which had been crammed in at the last minute.

Up in the rocket box was a microwave, a collection of loose hangers, and a plastic storage box containing, among other things, dish soap. I bought it in Boulder so it would be, you know, plant-based and unscented.

Somewhere in Nebraska, the dish soap cracked open and dribbled out, coating the contents of the box in a gooey ectoplasm-like slime. So, when we went to move Quinn into his dorm—and by this point, we were in a god-awful rush—the dish soap fiasco only added to the stress. We washed off the stapler, Post-It notes, paperclips, and shampoo bottle, but the signed poster of Glen Plake was beyond saving. The sink was overflowing with bubbles. And the box still had about a half cup of dish soap in it.

“Just take the whole box down to the bathroom and rinse it out in the shower,” I said.

“Where’s the shower?” said he.

“I don’t know, but it’s got to be down the hall.”

Five minutes passed. He walked back in with the soapy box.

“I can’t find the bathroom.”

The moment was emblematic of our College Move-In Day. There were no rainbows, no unicorns. I did not make his bed up all nice and cozy like. Seriously, I couldn’t even find the sheets. (They were stuffed inside the microwave.)

The college was welcoming and all the current student volunteers cheerfully shuttled us around on golf carts at high speeds. Lots of students pitched in to move his stuff from the car to the dorm, three flights up. The maintenance guy even followed me up the stairs, picking up hangers as I dropped them.

“You’re like Hansel and Gretel with these hangers,” he said.

Move-In Day turned into a complete fire drill because we’d spent 2½ hours going through a series of 12 registration steps in the library, from local banking and employment paperwork to voter registration and securing the student ID (that was a major log jam). We nearly missed lunch in the dining hall.

So, we rinsed all the soap of everything, crammed clothes in the dresser, hung a few pants, and shoved the rest of the stuff under Quinn’s bed. He’ll have to hang the pictures of his mom some other time.

To make matters worse, we had to deal with Quinn’s hand. The night before we left, he’d jammed his thumb tossing around the football with his brother and dad. As the hours and miles ticked by on the drive, the hand continued to swell. By Sunday night, it had turned black and blue. I told him we would need to hit the college’s health center on Monday (aka, Move-In Day).

“I am not going to the health center on Move-In Day,” he said.

“Yes, you are,” said me.

I threatened to not leave the state if he didn’t go.

“That looks pretty bad,” said the nurse at the health center. “You need to go to urgent care, like today. Before mom leaves town.” (You should always listen to your mother.)

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So, after a welcome from the president in the chapel and a meetup with his advisor, we stopped by the dorm and met the roommate. After chatting for exactly 38 seconds, we drove off to find an urgent care. Finding one that was in-network meant sitting in the hot car on the phone with the insurance company. We spent three long hours at urgent care. Miraculously, the x-ray showed no bones were broken, but the doc prescribed wearing a brace, rest, ice, and compression for two weeks.

While we were at urgent care, the rest of the freshman class was having their first dinner in the dining hall (insert sad emoji). Instead, we stopped by McDonald’s (insert barf emoji). By the time we got back to the dorm, it was after 8 p.m., making him late for an important dorm meeting with the RA. We were both feeling tired and grumpy.

Quinn stomped off toward the dorm, holding the brace he refused to wear in one hand and the burger he refused to eat in the other. I got out of the car and called after him in the settling dusk, “Um, hey. I think this is it. I think this is goodbye.”

He came back to the car and gave me the best hug he could muster with all that stuff in his hands. No tears were shed by anybody. Maybe that’s okay. He had told me I better not cry when I dropped him off.

“That would just be embarrassing, mom.”

Back home, as I scrolled through my FaceBook feed, I came across picture after picture of happy kids settled into their dorm rooms, fluffy comforters on beds and college pennants proudly affixed to bulletin boards. I don’t have a single picture from Move-In Day. By now you know it kind of sucked all around.

It wasn’t easy bringing this particular child into the world (that’s another story), so maybe it’s fitting that pushing him out of the nest wasn’t a frictionless experience. Either way, it’s time for him to fly.

Post Script: The road trip to drop my son off for college was significantly more fun than Move-In Day. Read about it here.