August 26, 2002
DOWN HOME:
The heart takes longer to learn
___We were working away, trying to get Lindsay settled into her dorm room at Hardin-Simmons University, when Joanna burst out laughing.
___"I just remembered who lived in this room our freshman year," my wife chortled. "Guess. You'll never guess."
___Jo moved into the opposite end of the fourth floor of Behrens Hall, the freshman women's dorm, 27 years ago this month. For several hours last Tuesday, she'd been trying to figure out who occupied Lindsay's room, on the northwest corner of that same floor. I lived across campus in Anderson Hall, but Jo and I didn't know each other then, and I certainly didn't have any idea which girls lived in which rooms almost three decades ago.
MARV KNOX
Editor
___"I don't have a clue," I told Jo, who guffawed at the irony of what she was about to tell me.
___The occupant was my infamous second HSU girlfriend, the most--ummm, how should I say it?--unusual girl I ever dated. We came from completely different backgrounds, and our friends probably thought we were crazy. I know mine did.
___And now, here we were, helping our daughter move into the room of one of the most colorful characters of our own freshman class. If Lindsay starts eating fried chicken with a fork, I'll know the spirits of long-gone coeds inhabit the hallowed halls of that old dorm. Sometimes, you've gotta laugh to keep from crying.
___In our case, it didn't work. At least not all day. Don't tell anybody, but I cried on the way to the computer store, where I was dispatched to buy an extension cable for Lindsay's mouse, as well as on the way to Wal-Mart, where I was sent in search of a shower-curtain rod.
___Taking your first child to college is sort of like donating an organ--only without anesthesia: You have an idea this is a wonderful thing you're doing, but it hurts like nothing you could've imagined. And when you're finished, you feel like part of you is missing.
___Still, taking Lindsay to HSU was the hardest great day her mother and I have ever endured. For almost 19 years, we prayed and praised and taught and sometimes even lectured and scolded so that she would be prepared and eager for this day. She's a lovely daughter, but we've known all along she doesn't really belong to us; God has allowed us the blessing of raising her as his child.
___So, there we were, alternately laughing and crying and working to help her build a nest for the next year. And, of course, when we weren't facing our own dread, her mother and I were bursting with pride and excitement in anticipation of this wonderful venture upon which she embarked last week.
___This is a lesson I've been telling myself over and over. My head knows it's all factual. I'll be ever so grateful when my heart embraces it as truth.
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