my Scarlet O'Hara twist on things and what is left behind

When asked how I handled dropping Ed off at college, I told my friend that I am focused on what happens next and keeping busy with the daily tasks that lie in wait for me.  Tuesday is orientation for Reg and Curly at junior high complete with laptop pickup, supply drop off, and school pictures.  We will have 3 tots that I babysit for in tow.  

Translation:  I am pulling a Scarlet O’Hara here.  Not familiar with her coping mechanisms?  ‘I will think about that tomorrow.  Tomorrow is another day.’  Call it avoidance, if you will.  That is how I am dealing at the moment.  Maybe I will fall apart later. 

Back when Lad first went away to school, it was an adjustment.  He had been pushing the envelope and testing us on the regular in high school though.  College was a welcome change.  

Lad turned 21 this summer.  Lad:  'Treat me like I am 21!'  Coach and I:  'Act like you are 21.'  Nuff said?    Already since he flew back to New York Monday, we have had multiple phone conversations and there were no doors slammed or harsh words exchanged in the process.  21 year olds should not live at home.  

I know Ed will come home for visits, but I also know that it will never be the same.  He will only be a visitor not someone living under our roof.  He will be focused on seeing friends.  To prepare us, he was singly focused on his social life all summer.  ‘So and so leaves tomorrow.  We are all going over there tonight.’  Me:  'You will see these peeps again and you HAVE been seeing them all summer.'  He was hardly home -always racing off to caddy, to workout, or to see friends.  Meanwhile I whiled away the hours leading up to the day he would leave for college by ordering things on Amazon or interrupting school supply shopping with Curly to grab toiletries for him at Target.

And I am left with this . . .
Tank's sense of humor.
  He sent this text as I drove
home.  Ed does
 not cook and he is not one
 with nature, so
 I was like, 'huh?'  then the
followup text came. 
Wonder if I should start bracing
 myself now for
 the absence of Tank's sense of
humor when he
goes away in 2 years.  

Lad may have left a trail around the house and we would wake up unsure of where he slept the night before:  the basement couch, Coach's family room recliner, his own bed, or maybe he never came home, but I will miss his sense of humor and the stories surrounding the encounters he had with golfers while he caddied.  

I will miss conversing with Ed, because we used to talk and joke about things like school or his sports teams or my babysitting or whatever was happening.  My concerns became his concerns and he was a good guy to have around when I was stressed about something.  

Meanwhile I am left with:  Mini, who likes to talk to me, and Curly, who has a velcro attachment to me, so I have that going for me.  Tank has a few more years to eat entire packages of things and leave his belongings EVERYWHERE before he goes away to college.  He is a one-word responder when asked about usual things like school and team practices and friends.  If Reg is not careful he is going to inhale a basketball while he is living and breathing all things basketball, and I may struggle to remove said basketball from his airway.  A switch was recently flipped from 'good-kid' to ‘teenage-kid’ in Reg and he now has an answer for most everything and a sneer for everything else, so my jaw is often clenched.  

At least the two college kids left their room in a TOTAL state of disarray so I can busy myself fixing that up as a distraction from my 'where the Hell did everyone go?' feeling, which was so thoughtful of them.