Trigger warning. I discuss the college policy on rape and the memories it brought up for me. As life happens I write about whatever it inspires. Going to Sophia’s college campus brought back a lot of memories. Most of them good as I loved going to college. This trip also brought up some bad memories and fears for my daughter. I write about my feeling about the campus rape policy which I’m sure is the same throughout the nation. They let the woman decide what to do in regards to prosecution. They say it’s respectful to let her deal with it privately if that’s what she wants and at the same time claim that their numbers are low. I’m sure their reported numbers are low.
I believe that this university is a wonderful, nurturing place for Sophia and I’m excited for this chapter in her life. No matter where she goes or what she does, this world is not going to be a safe place for a young woman. It makes it that much harder for a mother to let her daughter fly the nest.
Mike flew out to Georgia with Sophia in February for the scholarship interview, so it seemed good for me to be the parent who went with her to “Visit the College” day in March. I still haven’t been to Esther’s campus. When she was looking into colleges, the little children were still too needy for their mother to be away for the weekend. They still get into fights and like to know where I am at all times, but as I learned on my birthday weekend, they are old enough that I can go away without them making me regret it.
Sophia and I chose a late flight on Friday afternoon when our classes were over. I saved my packing till after lunch and was ready to go after her last zoom session. Sophia drove us to the airport so that I’d be fresh for the drive from Atlanta, Georgia to the small college town. She isn’t old enough to drive a rental car.
The worst part of flying is having to sit still for over an hour. Wearing a mask doesn’t bother me like it used to. The Atlanta airport was crazy busy and huge. We had to take a monorail across the property to get to the rental cars. People tried to stay six feet away from each other but often crowded together when it was needed. I haven’t heard “Excuse me,” and “Pardon me,” as much as I did in that one trip in years. Must be southern courtesy.
We chose a Nissan from the rental car line up because I know someone who drives one. It had comfortable seats and excellent gas milage and was a great choice. Sophia was thankful that she didn’t have to make the drive because a series of thunderstorms rolled over us making visibility on the freeway a nightmare. It was dark by then too and the tall trees to either side of us were shadowy ideas instead of the verdant forests they became for the drive back. It was enough to remind me of Washington.
My home state was on my mind the next morning as well. We were walking to campus from the hotel, and I was looking down at my feet stepping up from the street to the sidewalk when I saw a huge pile of pine needles. My mind flashed back to a summer afternoon at a little park on Fourth Plane in Vancouver, Washington where my nine year old self hid under the bows of a fir tree and tried to weave the long brown pine needles into little baskets. I looked up expecting to see the pine trees of my youth and was traumatized to see an oak tree. It was so disappointing that I am still not over it. Never before in my life have I seen pine needles used as mulch, but it was everywhere replacing bark chips or other ground cover under bushes and every kind of tree on campus. Where do they get it all? Are there forests with empty floors or do they harvest the needles when they make pine trees into lumber?
The campus was beautiful. It reminded me of the days at Notre Dame. There is something grand about living amidst such beauty, and the thought of Sophia studying there made me happy. We passed the sand volleyball courts where Sophia might play with her friends and the football stadium where she will go see the home games. We gathered in the basketball stadium six feet apart from the other parents and students to hear the welcoming remarks. It sounded like Sophia’s peers are all overachievers. She’ll have to do a lot of work to keep up, but she is driven too. The school has a huge emphasis on internships and community projects. They want to turn out kind and compassionate people, a quality I want for my daughter as well.
They separated the students and the parents next. Sophia went to meet her peers and find a roommate through the icebreaker activities of the day. The parents were given a choice of eight seminars to attend. I couldn’t help but think how different an experience Mike would have had. He might have chosen the more academic topics. I wanted to know more about health and safety. I learned about the doctors and therapists available for the students and that the campus police will do a well check to tell the students to call their mom. From both the counseling center and the police led seminars I found out that girls aren’t encouraged to press charges if they are raped. If they decide to pursue legal measures then they will be helped through the process, but if they want to keep it quiet and see a therapist instead that is respected too. Then they told me that the numbers of assault on campus are very low. Knowing their policy on reporting, their low numbers were no comfort to me.
I remembered an incident that happened to me back in college. I was between boyfriends and was feeling lonely one evening when a boy I didn’t know well invited me to come over to his dorm to watch a movie. It was so easy to cuddle up next to him looking for a temporary substitute for the physical closeness I was missing. As the credits rolled down the screen, he tried to kiss me, and I was shocked how much he misunderstood my intentions. I told him I wanted to go but he wanted to see how far he could pressure me. It occurred to me that I was in a boy’s room late at night and he was so much bigger and stronger than I was. There was no guarantee that he would respect me or my, “No.” No reason to think he held sexual purity as a virtue. I remember shock and fear, being nice to him while repulsing his pawing hands as I slowly backed towards the door, and how fast I scurried back to my dorm. Later a mutual friend said that that boy was bragging about making out with a girl. At least he didn’t mention my name. How different our perspectives on that night.
A girl I knew went to a party her first weekend as a freshman and was drugged and raped by who knows how many men. There are so many dangerous scenarios for a girl away from home.
I left my purse in the room with the police officer and didn’t notice it until arriving across campus at another seminar. I came back to find that my purse had been turned in. It was a relief to have it though it was much too hot and humid to go across campus yet again. Instead, I opted for the closest seminar which was on internships. They emphasized to the parents as they had to the students that the university experience is what the students make of it. There is a lot of competition to get the internships, but nearly all students who work with the internship office will land an opportunity. Even better news is that the students who don’t live in either the main college town or Atlanta can stay on one of their campuses for only three hundred dollars for the summer to accommodate their living near the job. We hope that Sophia will be able to find internships through friends here in Fort Worth or in Dallas, but it’s good to hear that she won’t be limited by being an out-of-state student.
At that seminar I joined a group of mothers whose daughters are deciding between that university and other universities. The mother who sat in the row of desks ahead of me has a daughter who like Sophia wants to become an accountant. Unlike me she wants her daughter to change to pre-med. An advantage of this one is that it has great pre-med, pre-law, and engineering programs which give students many options for future careers. The ladies were all on What’s App and no one did Facebook like me, so I may not reconnect with them though we exchanged phone numbers.
That night as we walked back to our hotel the thought of assault weighted heavy on my mind.
I told Sophia, “I’m going to give you a double message and I’m so sorry about it. First, I want you to know that there is nothing you can do that would make it okay for someone to rape you. No choices you can make, no clothes you wear, no places you find yourself. No one deserves that ever. If anything happens to you, I will stand beside you and support you and do whatever you need. At the same time, do whatever you can do to try to stay safe. Be careful walking alone at night. The campus security can escort you anywhere on campus any time. Don’t be alone in a boy’s room. Be careful at parties….” The list went on and on.
It was so much easier to send Esther to a Catholic college where everyone had to write an essay on how they would respect all the school rules. A college that has strict guidelines as to respect, dress code and enforced segregated dorms. I had the safety talk with Esther, but sending Esther off didn’t trigger these memories like seeing Sophia’s college has.
Despite my fears, I’m so excited for Sophia. The classrooms with the seminars were wonderful places to learn. They brought back memories of sitting in lectures staring rapt at the board as the professor explained the intricacies of physics or math. They were such good years for me. So much growth as a person. So many good friendships made. Sophia found a sweet roommate as well, a shy girl who like Sophia suffers from migraines. The girls felt like that had great sympathy for each other and were relieved to have found one another.
I had talked myself out by the time we arrived at the hotel and felt much better. We watched an episode of a new ice skating show on Netflix and then drove out for dinner. We stopped by the school bookstore for a sweatshirt, and then went out for sushi. Sophia liked it more than me. I’ll stick with sushi handrolls. Sophia navigated me back to campus. We drove through the neighborhoods between the campus and downtown. The houses were wooden more like the homes in Washington state where I grew up than the brick houses in Texas and the adobe homes in New Mexico, but they had the wrong architecture. The tall pine trees were also dissimilar from the trees back home, too skinny, too close together. It made me homesick. I kept looking for familiar faces but though a lot of the people had a similar shape of face they all looked foreign to me.
Sophia brought me out of my reverie saying, “Turn right at the bridge.”
I swerved into the right lane.
“You have to turn left.”
“But you just said turn right?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You said, ‘right at the bridge.’”
She enunciated, “Turn left just as you get to the bridge.”
We made it back with enough time to binge watch some more ice skating episodes before bed.
The next morning, we checked out and headed north to the closest OCA orthodox church. It was about twenty minutes away and each mile made me worried about Sophia’s commute. It was a great parish though. The moment I stepped into the sanctuary a sense of peace and of being home engulfed me. The vestments, icons, incense, and choir music were all familiar. The people were kind and as they were having a Lenten retreat, we stayed for the afternoon. I was touched by the message of love given to us by the guest speaker. We found out that there’s a Greek Orthodox parish closer to the school. Sophia and I may attend it together when I drive her out in August.
We ate dinner at a Caribbean restaurant on the way to the airport where I left my credit card which I realized when we stopped to get gas. Men were arguing a few rows over, but I ignored them and went into the store and handed a twenty to the guy in the bullet proof cage who started pump number five for me. I was feeling disoriented after that and missed the turn to the airport. Sophia was navigating me and told me to follow a loop de loop. Another loop de loop followed by yet another. At the fourth one I rolled my eyes at her and accused her of making me drive around in circles, but the final loop brought to me where I had missed my turn and in we went with plenty of time. It was a good thing that I had brought cash because not only did we need it to pay for gas, our plane was delayed for several hours, and we were thankful for some Starbucks.
The lady behind us at Starbucks was wearing fuzzy, leopard loungewear. I commented on how comfortable she looked and laughed when she told the barista that her name was Opra. It was actually Tiffany. She had been stuck at the airport since ten that morning and had spent her day roaming the airport halls. We became bff’s over the next two hours while we talked until her flight to New Orleans took off. She bought my book Syra’s Scribbles III and friended me on Facebook! I’m certain we will stay in touch.
I spent the next week freaking out about how empty and difficult my life will be without Sophia here, but I’m getting used to the idea. I go between asking her to do extra errands while I can have that extra help and doing more for myself because I know I can. Her life away at the university will be amazing and I’m truly thrilled for her.
Syra's Scribbles 