When you’re taking your child off to university, you have a plan in your head of how it will go.
The journey down. Car snacks. Counting down the minutes on the sat nav. Unloading the van and navigating narrow staircases. Then the unveiling of the new room – deciding where everything will go, unpacking cases, making the bed and setting everything up.
That was the plan.
Sadly, not all plans work out!
We had always planned to move our youngest in on the Saturday. Admittedly, we may not have explicitly said this, but equally, nobody had told us we couldn’t.
The Friday before was busy. We finished all the packing, went for a final lunch together and then collected the van.
On the way home, I received a frantic call.
The letting agent had phoned wanting to know when he was collecting the key to his house and room.
“Tomorrow,” my son replied.
“But you can’t. We’re closed on Saturdays!”
What followed can only be described as an outpouring of many different emotions. Tears. Anger. Devastation.
The letting agent wouldn’t budge. There was no way we were collecting those keys on Saturday, despite the handover apparently taking five minutes at most.
I was gutted.
We wouldn’t be able to help him unpack. We couldn’t set up the TV or Xbox, make his bed or unpack his cases. We couldn’t do any of the things we’d done when we took our daughter to university.
After a pretty rubbish Friday, we picked ourselves up, visited Nana and Grandpa, had a really lovely tea together and our youngest said his goodbyes.
Saturday morning, we were up at 6.30am, loaded the final bits into the van and headed off.
With the permission of the letting agent, we could at least move his belongings into the house. They would just have to be stored in various rooms until Monday, and he would have to sofa surf for two nights.
The journey was… bumpy!
Transit vans are definitely not built for comfort and I think all three of us felt every single mile. But, with the car snacks installed, we had a good journey down. Somehow our youngest even managed to sleep. I have absolutely no idea how!
We arrived in good time and encountered our next challenge – finding somewhere to park anywhere near the house.
Two trips around the block later, we managed it.
It didn’t take long to unload. His housemates helped, we found various places around the house to store everything and we even managed to unpack some of his things into the kitchen.
And then we got a really good look at his bedroom door.
Not quite the big room reveal we’d imagined!
And that was it.
Because there wasn’t anything else we could do, our moving-in visit was incredibly brief. We didn’t want to loiter around because the whole situation already felt hard enough. Eventually, we all agreed it would be better to say our goodbyes and make tracks for home.
I think we all felt a little robbed.
This was a moment that had felt so important to us, and suddenly it had been taken away. Instead of leaving him settled into his new room, bed made and belongings unpacked, it felt like we’d simply unloaded a van and abandoned him to fend for himself.
The journey home was quiet.
I think it’s going to take us a little while to let go of how we thought the day should have been.
But then the messages started arriving.
Our son and his friend had headed down to the coast, had chips for lunch and then hit the rollercoasters!
Later that evening came more reassuring messages. He was getting on well with his new housemates. He was okay.
Actually, he was more than okay.
On Monday he’ll finally pick up the key to his room. His housemates are going to help him move everything in, and I’ve insisted on photographs and videos once it’s all done. I’m sure it will look great.
I just wish we’d been there to help.
But perhaps that’s the strange thing about this stage of parenting.
We had a picture in our heads of how we would help him start this next chapter.
Instead, he started it himself.
And maybe that’s exactly what leaving for university is supposed to be about. ❤️
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