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‘Twas The Night Before College

Editor’s Note: Last week we gave you tips to prepare for back to school. This week, here’s a column for those of us left behind as they go off to school.

The night before my son left for college we agree to do an after-dark zipline ropes course.

This is crazy for a couple of reasons. One? He hasn’t packed. Two? It’s a dreadfully humid ninety degrees. And three? I am too old to be swinging through trees like Tarzan’s great aunt.

But tomorrow he’ll be gone.

So responsibility be damned, clean underwear and one’s dignity is overrated anyway.

The adventure park he picks is meant for daytime dalliances, romping through sun-dappled trees, but now the sun has set. There are no strategically placed floodlights mapping the tangled maze, just a few haphazardly strung Christmas-tree lights, the kind that still hang in my yard eight months past accepted East Coast etiquette.

Glancing around, I see hints of obstacles in the branches. There are planks of wood dangling at odd angles, held up by who knows what. There’s the odd hoop, and wait a minute...I think that’s a skateboard, but I can’t be sure, it’s hard to see that far up the tree.

I am the oldest person there by decades, except for the DJ who looks to be in his 70s. His job is to supply the soundtrack for the evening. If I were to give his playlist a name, it would be “Inappropriate Music to Inspire Confidence on a Ropes Course.” His choice of tunes includes Ke$ha’s “I’m going down. I’m yelling timber…” and Miley’s “I came in like a wrecking ball ... “

We stand at the beginning. Here is where you choose the level of difficulty. We skip two levels and go green.

My son and I climb about 20 feet straight up to the first platform, which is only big enough to fit three people at a time. The obstacle looks like one of those bridges in a movie where it is so rickety it will only hold long enough for the hero to cross. But this rope-strung bridge does not even guarantee the good guy safe passage; each plank is independent of the other, so as you step on to the first board you pitch forward, swing side-to-side, trying to time when to reach your foot out to the next plank. I am leaning so hard on the safety cable there is a rope burn in my armpit. Tank top on a rope course...bad idea. But I, like the hero, make it to the other side. We traverse through the trees. In one section my hands are so sweaty I nearly lose my grip on the trapeze used to cross a ravine. We go through hoops, ride a skateboard across a wire, and then when I think we might get a break, the zip-line appears.

My son goes first.

Zing, he vanishes into the night. He calls me across. I lock-on to the line and jump. The twinkling Christmas tree lights fly by like in Star Trek when the Spaceship Enterprise goes warp speed. A tree with a small platform appears from nowhere. I do stop, but not without smashing my shin. I ask my son, “Have you ever gone that fast on a zip-line before?” “No” he says, “But I just think it feels faster and scarier, because you are in the dark and can’t see what’s coming.” #metaphorforraisingkids, “It feels faster and scarier, because you’re in the dark, and can’t see what’s coming.”

Twenty minutes later we have conquered the green, and we are on to the blue level.

I can now add to my list of maladies, aching arms, and legs shaking so hard I can hardly stand. My son, still not winded, takes off.

What could possibly be next? I look up at something that seems to be a mere pole with tiny, sparsely embedded objects used for climbing upward. Limbs shaking, shin throbbing, armpit burning, I say “Listen, I just don’t think I can go on.”

“That’s alright, mom” he replied “but I’m going to keep going if that’s OK with you.”

And he climbs into the night, and out of sight.

While I stood on the platform waiting to be rescued, I heard the strains of Idina Menzel’s “Let it go, let it go…” and I did just that.

I let go the tears I had been holding back for 19 years.

I was crying not because I am going to miss him. I will. And not because it goes by so fast. It does. My tear-stained face is for all the times I was brave, and didn’t want to be. For all the times I said “It’s going to be OK!” and had no idea if it was going to be OK. For the bones that snapped, the heart that broke, the driving solo, his year away from home living in a big city, volunteering in a poverty-stricken neighborhood. All the sobbing I stored up, because to be other than brave would have scared me as much as it would him.

But not today, I was the one who said “I just can’t do it,” he went on without me, and everything will be just fine.

A guy from the rescue staff sends up a safety-line. I clip in. He says, “Don’t worry, just jump. I’ve got this.” I believe him. So I step off into the darkness, and land lightly on solid ground. When I arrive at the dwindling bonfire, there is my son. He glances at me and says, “Mom, you don’t look so good,” then turned around and offered, “Hop on I’ll give you a piggyback ride to the car.”

I jump on and let him carry me the rest of the way.

Lisa Nee of Madison is an executive producer with Allen/Nee Productions. She took on this adventure with her son last year, and then returned again this year before her son went off to college.