This is the season of economic emancipation towards which we have lusted lo these many years: youngest just graduated from college. Not that we don't have a modest agreed-upon financial bridge for her to "the real world", where beloved grown daughter is to get a job, medical and car insurance and even buy her own shoes.
But the promised land is still months away. And even with our best-laid plans, there are surprises. Like her last jaunt up to Santa Cruz, tears in our eyes as we watched our grown daughter rent her very first U-Haul trailer and drive all by herself to move out the last vestiges of her college life. A few hours later, there were tears in our eyes when we heard her cry of distress on the phone. Just about a million worst-case scenarios flashed through our brains, and so, when we heard what it was, we were mightily relieved.
She'd been ticketed for speeding even while going under the speed limit (for cars that is) not knowing that with a trailer, the limit is much lower. (Couldn't the policeman have just given her a warning?) Relieved and therefore effusive, we offered to share the price of the ticket with her. All was well for a few hours. But going 55 miles per hour had put her behind schedule and she was getting tired. "Don't drive when you're tired," we said. "Don't worry about the cost--we'll pick up the price of a room...but make it a nice one, where people have to go through a lobby to get to the rooms." She picked the one at Harris Ranch.
To make a long story short, she made it there and back--the cost to us more than the value of the belongings that were retrieved. But she's safe and sound and heading for her first professionally-paying job in France in a couple of weeks.
Carol Orsborn