Milestones

August has arrived and with it an important milestone for Davis and me. It's time for him to go to college.

We kicked off the big day with a celebratory dinner. JoJo usually has family dinner on Wednesday night, so last Wednesday, Go-to-College Eve, she served Davis's favorite meal, calypso chicken and his dessert of choice, fresh peach cobbler. Friends and relatives joined us for the occasion.

Afterward, Megan came home with us, and we got Davis packed up and ready to go. Lawson helped too, but his main role was to examine Davis's room to see how he could make it his own. 

 

They don't let you take much to SUNY Maritime College, so making room in the car wasn't much of a problem. Only two of the above suitcases belonged to Davis. The other two were mine and Stephen's. 

Then at six o'clock, bright and early, Davis, Stephen, and I were on the road, traveling up I-95 toward the Big Apple. For the first ten hours or so, the trip was as pleasant as it could be. In fact, we remarked several times how we didn't feel as though we'd been in the car all day. Traffic in Washington and Baltimore was heavy, but not oppressively so, and even though we slowed down a bit, we felt like we were making good time. 

 

But upon departing Maryland, we discovered we had entered the land of toll booths. At the other end of the Delaware Memorial Bridge, we confronted our first experience:  four dollars to enter the state of Delaware. We thought that was a little pricey. After all, the tolls we'd paid in the past were more along the lines of thirty-five cents. But we soon learned the Delaware bridge was the bargain on our adventure. Want to go to New Jersey? No problem. That'll be six bucks, please. Here's our fabulous turnpike! Need to take it to Manhattan? Of course. It's a bargain at $16.50.  To get to the Bronx, you can either swim across the river or pay twelve bucks to cross the George Washington Bridge (and when three of the four lanes are closed, you don't get a discount, but you do get to enjoy the bridge for an hour, so I suppose that means you get your money's worth).

 Delaware Memorial Bridge

And that's when we realized another big difference between North and South.  When travelers cross into Florida, they get orange juice. But up north, each time we crossed into another state, we got fleeced. Here's the solution to Georgia's budget problem. We just need to set up toll gates at every interstate crossing Georgia's borders. If we charged every driver a dollar to come and go, we could probably abandon the lottery and still build new schools for every county. 

But I digress.

We finally made it to New Rochelle, where we found our very comfortable hotel. Stephen and Davis went to orientation the following day, where they learned about SUNY Maritime's sailing club, fishing club, SCUBA club, and lacrosse team. They gave Davis all the information he needed to begin his first week of classes. They returned that evening with a report that SUNY Maritime is like a big BC and that Davis would fit in just fine.

Davis also seemed ready to go. Maybe he was just ready for me to stop hugging on him. Stephen warned me, though. "When we get there Sunday, we can't go in the dorm and see his room. We just have to drop him off at the curb, and we have to say good bye there. So get prepared."

I did. Saturday we had the day to ourselves, so we went into Manhattan. Stephen had never been there, and Davis hadn't been there in five or six years, so we showed Stephen some Big Apple landmarks like Times Square, Bryant Park, and Grand Central Station.

Then, after lunching at Patsy's Pizzeria (a favorite of mine, Lawson's and Dawn's), we sauntered over to Central Park, where we rented a remote control sailboat at the water conservatory.

It was a nice last day with our boy, and spending the whole day with him made the separation next morning a little easier to endure. Davis arrived at his residence hall at 9:00 Sunday morning. When we pulled up to the curb, an upper classman met us at the car and helped him unload his belongings. They took his baggage to check in so he could store it in his room. I snapped photos of him while he wasn't looking. 

Off he goes to get in line...

He learned at orientation that he would store his baggage in his room for the first week because he would be living on the college's ship, which was docked right next to the building. There he would learn how to drill and learn the routine of the school. The campus is on a point at the southern tip of the Bronx, so it has a beautiful view of the city and lots of room for sailing and fishing in the cadets' spare time (although I don't know how much of that they'll have). 

 

 

 And so we said good bye. And it wasn't that bad.  Davis was ready to go, which made me feel better about leaving him, and although I knew I would miss him (and I do), I wasn't the weepy mess I thought I would be when we departed. And so Stephen and I made our way back across the George Washington Bridge, 

making sure our pockets were stuffed with cash for the toll gates on the way home, and drove down the east coast to Savannah, where Lawson was waiting for us.