Little Man on Campus

The best part of going to reunion was watching Toby explore my old campus.  He’s been figuring out this college thing, you see.  He knows that Christer teaches at a college, and he knows that students live at a college while they are taking classes.  He greeted the dorms with disbelief (“You lived here?  But it is just bedrooms!”), but was won over by the coffee shop, the study carols in the library, and the swings outside the student union.  (Yes, there is a swing set outside the union.)

I wasn’t sure how I’d react to bringing Max to Grinnell.  There are stories of young adults with Down syndrome going to college.  But they didn’t go to a selective liberal arts school.  Of course, that shouldn’t matter, Toby’s probably not going to Grinnell, either.  He’ll figure out his own path, probably one that neither of his parents could have predicted.

Still, being on campus with my baby was a very physical reminder that Max is walking into a future different from my previous experiences, different from what we had expected.

I’m still not sure how I feel about it.  We dressed him up in a collegiate T-shirt and posed him for pictures.  We wheeled him around the campus and soaked in the smiles and compliments.  He is a baby, and he did everything a baby should to attract attention and make his unemployed mama feel like she’s accomplishing something with that degree after all.  For now, that is enough.  We’ll sort out the dreams—his and mine—later, as we go along.