Friday is the big day. She is moving into the freshman dorm to begin her first year at college. There is great excitement all around. It has been a crazy year. 2020. The year of the Corona Virus and the disease Covid-19. She finally had her graduation – outside – bring your own chairs and space them 6 feet from other families. Senior displays were set up in car trunks in the first row of the parking lot, so you could walk around and look at them. She did her Senior Recital – to a small masked audience in a large church. At least she got to wear her prom dress to the recital. There was no prom this year.
On Thursday morning there was an email to the parents from the college. Mandatory covid-19 saliva tests will be administered to the students at check-in, before they can get their packet and their key. Results will be back in 24-48 hours, and it is recommended that they self-quarantine until they get them. Okay, how does that work in a dorm with a hall bath? It seems to have just occurred to somebody that they will be exposed to their roommate during this time. So they suggest that you might want to move your student into the dorm, take them back home for two days of isolation, and then drive them back to drop off at school. No.
Let’s think this through. She has an appointment to check-in at 9am on Friday – the first possible slot. This allows us to move her stuff into the dorm while there are still relatively few people in the dorm. Only 5 students from each dorm were allowed to sign up for each 15 minute time slot. She wants us to help her arrange the furniture and get her bed put together. Then she wants to take the time to unpack her boxes and organize all of her stuff by herself. Bringing her back home would interfere with that plan. Her roommate is checking in on Saturday at noon. Allowing 48 hours for that test to be processed puts us at noon on Monday. But she has in person classes starting at 11am on Monday. Driving in on Monday morning, just in time to go to her first class doesn’t sound like a good plan. She wants to walk through her class schedule and find all the buildings and rooms. She needs time to settle into her room and get set before classes begin. There is the risk that her roommate brings the infection. Then she would have to come home for two weeks. But her roommate has also been isolating all summer. We all decide that she will take the risk and stay in the dorm.
The email also indicated that there are some facebook pages I should have been following. I go and look for them. Oh, there was a Facebook Live on Wednesday night by the Housing department. I should go watch that. I hear what is apparently the second half of it. Someone is apologizing for cutting out, as they were having computer troubles, and people are thanking her for the useful information given in the first four minutes. I go looking for that first part, and instead I find last year’s talk. Oh, it is so different! There will be helpful volunteers to help move your stuff to your room. Then we will have great fun activities every night all week! Something about spraying foam all over each other. I just cry. This year, instead of great fun activities every night we get self-quarantine for 48 hours, wear a mask at all times, and stay 6 feet away from everyone. It can’t be helped. This is the world we are in right now, but I mourn for happier times and welcoming experiences for my daughter.
So, one more set of unexpected decisions are made. And we decide to let her take our old car and keep it on campus for the fall semester. This way, if she has to come home to quarantine, she will have a way to get here. Instead of taking the big van, we cram her bicycle, her refrigerator, and all of her boxes into the two cars and drive them both up to the college. She leaves first, because she has to go do the test and check-in by herself. We will meet her at the dorm. There are some helpful RA’s at the door, making sure that each student is only accompanied by two helpers, yet trying to be welcoming to the students. We have to wait until she comes out to identify us and take us to her room.
The furniture is not the way she wants it. The two beds are sticking out into the middle of the room from one side, with other pieces here and there. She wants her furniture down one side and her roommate’s down the other side, with the head of her bed in the corner by the window. We move it all around and make it fit. She wants the bed raised, so that the little dresser and her plastic drawer units will go underneath the bed. We brought a rubber mallet. We move her mattress on top of her roommate’s bed and start whacking the bedsprings out of their slots. Three corners are loose. On the fourth corner the handle of the mallet snaps in two and the head goes flying. Ooops! Plan B. Turn the bed over and Dad stomps on the edge of the bedsprings near the corner. This dislodges it. Now we can turn it back over and put it back together. We determine that the springs can go in the second slot from the top and still clear the dresser. This leaves just enough bedpost above the springs to help hold the mattress in place, and gives a little bit more stability to the whole thing. Dad has brought in the drawer units, and they all go underneath.
Now we add her bedding. There is a mattress pad on the mattress. We put the foam topper under it, then put on the zippered mattress cover. Her fitted mattress pad goes over this, then her sheets and her comforter. She chooses the grey and white patterned sheets, that came with her mint green and white comforter, to go on the bed first. She will save the pink and green unicorns for later :^). Mint green backrest pillow goes on the end. Grey and white throw pillows and a little green fuzzy one complete the nest. She hops on and snuggles in, opening her computer to connect to the system and check her email. It is comfy, and she is happy, though tired.
Dad continues to bring in her boxes while we are setting up the bed. We unpack the mirror and hang it on the wardrobe door. Hmmm. The hooks are made for a thicker door, but it works. The full shoe bag goes inside the other wardrobe door. Its hooks have the same problem, but they keep the door from shutting. We need a little board or something to fill the space and keep the hooks from tipping. We try the handle from the broken mallet. Not quite big enough. How about this ball of packing tape she took off of the drawer units? That works! It is not an elegant solution, but for the moment four balls of packing tape hold the hooks so that the door will close. We’ll have to think of a better solution later, but this works for the moment.
Putting the dresser under the bed leaves room for the desk to have some space around it. This is a good thing, since the only bookshelves are on the end of the desk. Refrigerator to the left of the desk. Trash can to the right. Laundry basket just fits with the stuff under the bed. Now we are down to the boxes. The big box that carried her bedding is empty except for packages and such, and it will go home with us. The rest of the boxes she can flatten and store behind her dresser. We are finished with the parts she wanted us to do.
We all head into town to get some lunch. The steak house is closed. We go to Freddy’s for burgers and fries. It is packed, so we wait through the drive through and take the food back to the dorm room to eat. Then it is time for final hugs and good-byes. She will go pick up her ID card and then unpack her boxes. We will drive back home. Freshman year has begun and our little one is on her own. She is ready to find her own way!