The Long Goodbye
By Rob Huffman
We were leaving Virginia early on the chilly morning of Friday, January 24, 2020, destined for even chillier New England. The feeling was festive, of course, as it always was when the four of us headed out on another adventure. But there was also an undercurrent of existential dread this time, a sense that things were moving too quickly. I had a furious if irrational desire to slow or even reverse time. Remember that scene in Superman—the Christopher Reeve one—where the Man of Steel flies around the earth backward to reverse time and bring Lois Lane back to life? I wanted to borrow that fabled red cape and do my middle-aged best to reverse the earth’s rotation, too, and with it time’s winged chariot. No one had died, but it still felt as though a minor tragedy was unfolding.
The tragedy, at least for this overly sentimental dad, was that my little girl was heading off for college. She’d planned on enjoying a gap year after high school—just relaxing, maybe getting a part-time job. But her impatience, her desire to MAKE THINGS HAPPEN!! had halved the gap, and now she’d be starting college as a midyear freshman. So, earlier than we’d expected, and with less emotional preparation time than we’d counted on, here she was, leaving home. Somehow I’d deluded myself—willfully? stupidly? an amalgam of both?—into thinking that in this world of evanescence and perpetual change, my own family arrangement would remain fixed. Permanent. I’d somehow convinced myself that I would always wake up in a home with my wife and two children present and accounted for. And just accounted for wasn’t sufficient. They had to still be present, too. Maybe if I could just spin the world back to, say, Emma’s sophomore year in high school, or even better, middle school….
I just wanted everything put back together. Intact once again. How had my own precious nuclear family suffered such a discombobulating nuclear event?
Of course, when your kids are young and college is still years ahead, the idea of them going to college is exciting. Your own progeny, roaming the halls of academe, armed with big books and big dreams! Saturday afternoon football games and red cup keg parties. Pulling all-nighters and toughing out 8 a.m. lectures on, say, Keynesian economics. And at the end, they’d be given the keys to the kingdom: a college diploma. The world their oyster! And you, the proud papa, glad to write the checks and shoulder the occasional tears to make it all happen.
The abstract picture is most appealing in that vague way that things still in the distant future always appear, detached as they are from time’s actual passage. Daydreaming about the future suited me fine, far off as it was. I just wasn’t prepared for the reality. Or at least the leaving home part of the reality. But there we were. Car packed. Pulling out of the driveway. Headed for Vermont.
During such times you realize just how casually cruel you probably were to your own parents in your callow and careless youth, how indifferent you were to those who raised you, finding them in many ways to be impediments or hurdles as your childhood neared its end. That’s how it had been years ago for me and my buddy Kevin Andrews, so desperately eager to board a train from the Alexandria station and barrel down those tracks toward our futures. We were bound for Charleston, South Carolina, where we were due to matriculate as “knob” cadets at The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina. Yes, we were that naive, thinking our suburban-coddled little selves would arrive at this antebellum institution in Lost Cause Dixie and it would all be a whimsical lark.
My history professor freshman year turned out to be a direct descendant of Robert E. Lee. Students had to stand at attention whenever he entered the classroom. I remain grateful my last name was not Grant. And further, what kid in his right mind shows up to a military school wearing a David Bowie T-shirt and hair halfway down his back, a space oddity if there ever was one to the good old boys who constituted most of the cadet corps? L’idiot, c’est moi. I did pushups until my arms buckled. Huffman, drop and give me 20 was on auto play that entire school year.
Even had I known all that was ahead of me, I still would have had zero consideration for how my parents felt standing on that train platform watching their oldest son leave them, leave his home, and embark on his selfish future. Did I glimpse them through the train windows, a dumb show of gut-racked grief, pantomiming a silent movie tragedy complete with tissues and tears, their faces a charades clue whose proper guess was Misery?
I did not.
Kevin and I were on the Kerouacian road. For us, life lay ahead. We needed no warnings, like Orpheus, to not look back. Looking back never even crossed our minds. Eurydice, who?
***
Our Emma has always charted her own course with an endearing, if at times exasperating, mixture of whimsy and what-the-hell adventurousness. She and her best friend, Tarryn, once concocted a line of “perfumes” they direct-marketed, going door-to-door, stinking up every house around our neighborhood. She showed up at high school casting tryouts for Mary Poppins already in the title-character’s outfit (a part she did not, alas, get). She started the girls’ wrestling program at Massaponax High School.
So we shouldn’t have been surprised when she chose a tiny school in Vermont for college. Never mind that our family had never set foot in or had any connection to Vermont, or that she was due to arrive in the largely unpopulated town of Craftsbury Common in mid-January New England. She had her whimsical, adventurous heart set on Sterling College, a tiny school, “100% environmentally focused,” with a student enrollment of 125 whimsical and adventurous kids. Yeah, it was a different kind of place.
The trip was enjoyable at first, ticking off the states in our not-overly-trustworthy 1999 Ford Taurus without snow tires (this detail, as we would discover, a Chekhovian first-act pistol): Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Massachusetts. It was the four of us—mom, dad, Emma, and younger brother Rory—and at this point, the world spinning forward was still perfectly acceptable.
We passed into Vermont that evening, still feeling jubilant. The Green Mountain State. Terra incognita. A new land to explore for our little family. We cheered and took a blurry photo of the state sign as we whizzed past. Hungry at this late hour, we stopped in Brattleboro for some food. So far, so familiar; we’d done this countless times before: Arrived somewhere new, spent some time exploring, stopped to eat. The four of us together, perfectly balanced, two on each side of the table, two males and two females, two parents, two kids. Why are symmetries so difficult to maintain?
Somewhere past Brattleboro, it occurred to my wife that we’d arranged no place to stay in Vermont. As a family, we were always inclined to fly by the seats of our pants, including booking overnight accommodations. In any case, I’d assumed that Vermont, like every U.S. state we’d visited, would have normally populated highways, a safe and familiar necklace strung with fast food joints and Cheap Rate motels. This turned out not to be the case in this second-least populated state in America. (Shout out to Wyoming, still number one!) There were no restaurants or motels, just a frontier-looking emptiness, forbidding mountains, miles of deserted highway. Where exactly did people around here eat and sleep anyhow?
Vera was finally able to locate an Airbnb near our destination, a beautiful and cozy basement apartment run by transplanted Bostonians, Claude and Phil. Snow covered the countryside, beautiful and calming. But also a bit intimidating. Remember that Chekhovian snow tire reference? Well, it wasn’t a pistol that grimly figured in our arrival that wintry night in Vermont, but skidding off the road was a clear and present danger. Our little Taurus, equipped with road-hugging capabilities better suited to the milder climes of Virginia, slid and fishtailed and spun with balletic, though terrifying, grace.
Despite the icy roads, we did make it up one final hill—and in Vermont everything seems to be on a hill—and happily checked into our Airbnb, while outside, snow continued falling.
One of our family traditions is watching the Grammys together. As kids, Emma and Rory would even design T-shirts featuring the musical acts they wanted to win. Somewhere we have these little kid shirts packed away, their Sharpied drawings of Bruno Mars and a very young Taylor Swift slowly fading. Since the Grammys were being broadcast the evening following our Vermont arrival, we were already happily anticipating wrapping up in blankets and snacking our way through Lil Nas X, Lizzo, and some weird-hair-colored newcomer named Billie Eilish.
The morning of the Grammys, we got up and Emma went outside in just her skivvies and rolled around in the snow, a frankly bizarre winter custom she had begun in Virginia—a celebration of youth, exuberance, and freedom. Maybe a little craziness. Watching her, we all laughed and, once she’d (barely) warmed up, headed out to find breakfast. There had to be a restaurant out there somewhere.
Only we couldn’t get up the slight hill leading out of Claude and Phil’s driveway to the longer downhill stretch to the road. The Taurus’ tires spun crazily, and despite its namesake’s bullish stubbornness, we couldn’t get traction on the ice. My useless, suburban-Virginia tires whirred dramatically, as Claude looked on with eyes that said “dumb Southerners.” Grabbing a bucket of sand from his garage, he sprinkled some under my tires. Ah, blessed traction! Soon we were on our way, but the harsh weather of Vermont had us all a little frazzled.
After breakfast, at a cozy little diner—still pre-Covid arcadian, innocent (and maskless) coughing and sneezing all around—we headed over to Sterling College. We had to meet with a surprising number of people: financial aid counselors, counseling center counselors, the college nurse. It seemed like an overly robust ancillary staff for such a tiny student population. Once we finished with all of Emma’s checking in appointments, we figured we’d grab some dinner and load up on snacks before settling down for the Grammys that evening.
This was where the separation anxiety—mine, not Emma’s—began in earnest, as a smugly officious Sterling College administrator informed us that incoming students would be required to remain on campus that evening for a series of new student meetings and welcoming activities. Parents were cordially not invited. We would have to relinquish Emma to this new life in this new and strange state even earlier than expected. It seems almost silly to say this, but I was shocked by the thought of watching the Grammys without Emma.
Dejectedly, our many-years foursome now at only 75% strength, we headed back to our formerly festive Airbnb. Once again it was a challenge to get up the hill to the house, the Taurus’ struggle mirroring our own emotional turmoil. The ascent required we get a running start. Meaning we had to gather sufficient speed on the flat road leading up to the hill to propel through the packed snow and ice for the climb. Unfortunately, a dog ran into the road just as we began the climb, and I was forced to quickly brake. Once I slid to a stop all momentum was lost, and trying to drive up the hill only resulted in spinning tires and muttered imprecations from me concerning unleashed canines and Green Mountain nitwits. We were forced to back down the small amount of hill we’d gained and, once again, accelerated from level ground. This time we just did make it up, over, and to the house. I felt as exultant as Orville Wright.
The Grammys were different that evening. Subdued. We watched with less enthusiasm, commented less on the acts and music. Emma’s absence was palpable, her spot on the couch conspicuously empty. The performances she would have enjoyed—Billie Eilish in particular—left us flat. Although there were extra snacks without Emma eating her share, I could barely taste them.
Once the awards show ended it was late—the Grammys had predictably overrun—and the three of us turned in. The bed Emma had warmed the previous nights remained unoccupied and cool.
The next day, a Monday, we were scheduled to begin our trip back to Virginia. We would be able to visit Emma for a short while that morning before heading home—we still hadn’t seen her dorm room—so the morning was a bittersweet mix of emotions. Happiness, because we’d gather as an intact family once again, but tempered by the fact the interlude would be brief. And this time, once we separated, we wouldn’t all be together for several months. I reminded myself that I shouldn’t indulge my gloominess and instead find a way to make the day positive and perhaps even joyous. After all, Emma was going off on her own great adventure. She’d be living in that wonderful and unrepeatable time of life where your entire world is comprised of 18- to 22-year-olds. She was eager and excited, ready to start. Any trepidation she had was the good kind, happy butterflies in the stomach.
So, I resolved to be Rick Blaine on the Casablanca tarmac when it’s time for Ilsa’s moment of departure. The Vermont scene was appropriately cinematic: A light snow falling, the majestic pines stately and beautiful in the white-blurred distance. Laughing young people whisked by, arms laden with dorm-stocking supplies. I was determined to be stoic in that snow-covered parking lot and bravely tell my daughter, that yes, this was her time, and she should absolutely pursue the life she was meant to live. That leaving home was the painful yet necessary template. Maybe if I’d had the trench coat and fedora instead of undignified and style-less dad clothes I could have said, lightly, humorously, “Here’s looking at you, kid,” and smiled lovingly because she was indeed my kid. I planned to give her a warm, fatherly embrace and then turn her over to all the impending joys and excitements of freshman year.
But there would be no sage advice offered on that wintry afternoon, no wry chucks on the chin. In fact, there would be no words at all. As the snowflakes swirled around us, it was Emma who had to gently let go of her sobbing dad. Turns out I wasn’t Bogie, but rather Ilsa, not wanting to leave but knowing it was time.
Emma (Who Graduated in May 2023) Packed for A Warmer Semester at College
***
Rob Huffman has worked as a high school librarian for a couple of decades now. He’s married, with two kids, and his fondest time-travel fantasy is to play guitar with a punk band at CBGB in the mid-’70s.
