Trying it again....hmmmm

I haven't blogged in a while, just too much stuff happening, but here goes again.

The last couple of years have been a lesson in what happens when you make plans. I have twins who graduated high school last year. My older child is in his third year of college now. My plans for my children have always included all of them "going away to college". I didn't do this and always felt I had missed out on something special. So much for my plans. The girls did cooperate to a certain extent. We made all the rounds of all the state schools within a 400 mile radius that they were interested in. They chose Sam Houston State University, approximately an hour north of our home. We moved them to Huntsville. I personally thought it was an awesome little town, reminiscent of my home town. Again, so much for plans. They stayed for one semester. I played the part of an empty nester in a large house. Just as I was settling in to my new role, in early December, the girls sat down with me at breakfast on a Sunday morning and gave me their news. One of them played the role of the speaker for both of them. She said they felt they had tried it my way, living away from home, paying their own bills, paying their own rent, buying their own groceries, etc. They felt they had proved they could be independent, but they didn't like it. They were both very unhappy in Huntsville and would I be too disappointed if they came back home and went to community college?

WOW! I knew they were having some problems fitting in, but this was a shock! They both took college courses in high school at the community college and told me, comparison, the classes at Sam had been "dumbed down to accommodate all the alcohol soaked brains". They didn't feel challenged. They both had all A's, but didn't feel any sense of accomplishment because it was all so easy. Final exams were not required, go figure.

They are not partiers. They have a close circle of friends who do lots of things together that don't include alcohol. Its a personal choice they both made that has limited their circle of friends. According to them, most of the people they encountered in class, in the clubs they joined, in their housing unit, were immature 18 year olds who were without parental boundaries for the first time and exploring what the means in ways that are stupid, dangerous and always include alcohol and/or drugs. Each morning when they opened the door of their apartment, according to them, the hallways outside reeked of the piles of vomit that were always there from the nightly parties. The first weekend they were at their new apartment, the police were in their building multiple times during the night breaking up parties, fights and carting people off to jail for offenses such as minors in possession and public intoxication. It was an eye opener!

I told them the only thing I could. Of course you can come back home. I did say that they had to stay through the end of the school year unless they could sublet their apartment. They went back to Huntsville that next Monday and drafted up signs and flyers. They went to the local copy shop and had 1000 copies made of the flyers. They posted them everywhere. They put them on all the cars in all the parking lots they passed. They posted bulletins online. Within a week, I was back in Huntsville, moving them out. I had no idea how unhappy they were or how much they hated the party atmosphere until they came back home. The stories I've heard since they returned made me shudder.

They have been back home since mid-December. They are both working (one has two jobs) and going to school. They are both content, although still unsure about "what they want to be when they grow up". Living at home and going to school wasn't what I had planned for them, but you know what happens when you make plans? Life.