For most the rush is winding down.  The moves are made, the hugs are given, the tears have been shed (mostly on our parts parents!!), and our babies are getting settled in their respective new “homes”.  We will always be their true home, but they are off on their first step to creating lives for themselves.  The first classes are attended and the fears or not knowing what a real college class will actually be like are being quelled, as is the bigger fear of just finding the classes on those vast campuses!  It’s such a big transition for all!  I imagine it will be a week or two until the initial excitement wears off and some homesickness is liable to set in.  A couple more phone calls, texts, or emails, maybe even some facetime calls to see our faces for a change.  Of course, we parents will put aside our own processes of withdrawal from our children, missing seeing their beautiful faces every day.  We will not mention any of our struggles with “child-has-gone-off-to-college-sickness!” and we will be there for them.  We will lift their spirits, buoy their confidence that they will do just fine in their classes that may seem daunting now, convince them that friends will come, niches will be found, and fun will be had.  It will be fine.  The “it will be fine” part is for both of us.  We both need a little convincing of that, and it will be.

We all come to adapt to a new normal.  A relationship that is built on the quality of time spent together not the quantity.  I attended the University of Colorado (as anyone familiar with my website is aware) traveling from Pennsylvania to do so.   Granted it was in the olden days, but planes did exist, and I was just a few hour plane ride away, but far from just around the corner.  I was very close to my parents, and it was the scariest thing I had ever done to move so far away from them for college but being very shy growing up I felt that it was my chance to grow, come out of my shell, and force myself to do all the things that up to that point frightened me so.  It worked and I flourished.  I feel like I came alive in college.  The other things that flourished is my relationship with my parents.

I never left Colorado after college, and my parents never left Pennsylvania.  But let me tell you that they were not only parents that I adored and whose counsel I sought in every major (and many minor!) decisions I made in my life, they were also two of my closest friends.  The distance only strengthened our relationships because we sought out times to be together and those times were such wonderful, quality times.

For me, that helps as I send my own kids off to their universities.  They are both doing as I did and going halfway across the country as well (in opposite directions conveniently, University of Vermont and Oregon State University!).  I am very close to both, and I know our relationships will change at this point, but I have hope that they will go in the direction mine did and develop into such wonderful ones.

I got a note the other day from a mom who had just sent her son one of my necklaces.  It was her way of sending a little love his way as he begins his college freshman year.  She wanted me to know how much he loves it.  As mentioned, college changed my life in so many ways.  This business was born out of the idea to celebrate that; to recognize accomplishments, to send some encouragement and love from home, to give them a token of the pride they feel at being at the college of their dreams.

This doesn’t have to be done with one of my pieces of jewelry of course, but little things that bring a smile to your baby’s face is likely to mean the world about now.