Graduation from a Parent’s Perspective: "Home Cooking"

Anna Quindlen, P’07, writes a poignant Newsweek article called “Home Cooking” describing what it’s like to see your child graduate college and actually move into the real world – and finally, as a parent, letting go. My mom sent it to me with the title “Fw: I found this pretty moving…” so it seems it’s already being passed around the college parents’ circles.

A friend whose children are just a little older than my own told me once that parents fool themselves, pulling away from the quad with an empty SUV and tears in their eyes, that sending a child to college constitutes the great separation. The real breach, she said, came after the car, full once more, left the quad with a mortarboard and a diploma tossed in the back seat.

During college there were those long winter breaks, the occasional weekend, the summers in which the high-school friends reappeared at the breakfast table, if pancakes at 1 p.m. counts as breakfast. But then, college over, real life began. The unfamiliar names of workplace acquaintances. The inconvenient or nonexistent holidays that come with the bottom rungs of the employment ladder. The tiny apartment in the new neighborhood. The frying pan…

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8 thoughts on “Graduation from a Parent’s Perspective: "Home Cooking"”

  1. Anonymous

    oh pleeze. if you’re in such denial that an article like this makes you panic or sad, then it’s probably good that it’s making you think about it. accept that it’s gonna happen, kids!-a senior who can’t wait to get out out out (though is admittedly also nervous)

  2. Anonymous

    oh pleeze. if you’re in such denial that an article like this makes you panic or sad, then it’s probably good that it’s making you think about it. accept that it’s gonna happen, kids!

    -a senior who can’t wait to get out out out (though is admittedly also nervous)

  7. Anonymous

    please do not post things so sad so close to graduation. at least wait until next year when first semester seniors have the thought of a second semester to help them deal with these sorts of inevitable things…

  8. Anonymous

    please do not post things so sad so close to graduation. at least wait until next year when first semester seniors have the thought of a second semester to help them deal with these sorts of inevitable things…

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