It's starting to sink in. With a tragedy the magnitude of Katrina, it's hard -- and wrong -- to think of losses of less than life, health, and livelihood as catastrophes. But losses are losses and, no matter how resolutely you push it away, grief does accompany them.
It's really just sinking in -- the year of questions, research, visits, interviews, essay writing, forms, tests, recommendations, apprehension, disappointment, relief, excitement, anticipation, planning, scheduling, choosing, shopping -- all that goes into a college choice, into what is, in our culture, a hugely significant rite of passage -- all upended in a matter of hours by a force completely beyond human control. While her high school friends are hanging out in the dorms and studying in the libraries and walking across the campuses they chose last spring, my daughter is accomodating herself to the demands of a completely unexpected turn of events. And even she if she is able to return to her college of choice in the spring, it won't be the same college and it definitely won't be the same city that she first visited more than six months ago.
She has actually weathered worse, and I have every confidence that her natural resiliency and formidable strength of character will enable her to pull through triumphantly, but still. Tough, tough times.
Hope in the Desert ~ Sacramento Valley From The Air
7 comments:
I`m so sorry for your daughter.
V
All the Florida colleges are taking kids from the affected areas to spend the a semester or two with them. They are working on a charter that if the MS, AL and LA colleges opened back up, the credits they've accumulated at the Florida colleges can be transferred fully toward their desired degree. That may be something you can look into if your daughter wants to go back to Tulane when it reopens...
No matter how your daughter's loss compares in magnitude to others, or how quickly you were able to find another college for her, she (and you) will still have to grieve the loss of her hopes and dreams of attending Tulane. There's no way around it I would think. It is huge adjustment to make in only a week's time.
I'm not wild about that picture as it is hard for me to see good in an artificial, unsustainable environment forced upon a desert which has it's own fragile, beautiful ecosystem.
Hard and wrong perhaps to view your own losses as catastrophes BUT it is a huge shift in expectations. It is your reality and after a year spent anticipating something else, extremely disappointing at best. My 8yo seems to think the fact that he doesn't have the latest Lego set is a catastrophe -- it's his reality but we did have a long talk about sharing and giving to those that lost everything.
I hope your dd can spend this semester enjoying her new school and growing/enjoying life as only a college freshman is capable. I hope you don't have to revisit the whole process again but I think you both are strong and resilient and will weather this storm just fine in the end.
I have mixed feelings about the photograph myself. I am with you on our invasion of the desert. OTH, the patterns from the air are irresistible. And the sense of something growing (yes, with water that could be utilized more cheaply and productively elsewhere) is a big step up from the grotesque developments that surround cities like Las Vegas (where our plane stopped over).
It's fascinating to fly over the country and see the mixture of human imprint and lack thereof. Much of the west reflects Human as Bigfoot -- the crop circles (irrigation, not alien), the valley fields, the dammed up rivers. I suppose a flyover of the Gulf Coast would reflect Human as something quite less.
"Much of the west reflects Human as Bigfoot -- the crop circles (irrigation, not alien), the valley fields, the dammed up rivers. "
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What a word picture this paints! I agree that the contrasts and the patterns are amazing. There was an article a few weeks ago in the NYT Magazine about an artist who rakes sand into intricate and huge patterns which are washed away by the next tide. So beautiful and so fleeting.
I certainly understand the impact of what your daughter has been through. that year of making a college choice is stressful for the entire family. So many factors are weighed in hopes of making the "the right choice". To have that thrown into chaos has to be distressing. I can imagine MY daughter's state of mind if this had happened to her. I don't know that she would be able to shift gears the way your daughter did. I'm sure you're very proud of her.
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