reader. writer.

So now that everything is held in person, I have to decide what to wear to accompany my 18-year-old twins to orientation, and it’s a lot. In May, I managed to find an outfit innocuous enough to get me through high school graduation as well as one for the award ceremony held in conditions designed for maximum discomfort.

At any rate, my goal this time is to be identifiable as a parent without standing out too much. This is not easy. Oh, to be clear, it’s not that I will stand out because I look so interesting, don’t worry. I will just stand out when it becomes too obvious that I never bothered to learn how to play the role of parent in public.

I have noticed that for anyone college age or college-bound, I rather smoothly transition into a chatty advisor/quasi-professor role (my former career), which I’m pretty sure confuses my children, who are more accustomed to my introvert-in-public behavior. Not to brag, but I am often quite good at cutting off most attempts at conversation. I smile, nod, then turn my head and body facing away, so there’s no sense that I’m waiting to hear more. I hope to appear polite and friendly. Just not here for the chit chat.

Besides managing my own body language, I have to navigate what my children want and need from me. As I write this, I am remembering the feeling I kept getting this year whenever my kids asked me for help with something, often some kind of guidance on how to use some kind of software, or what their teacher expects for an assignment, or anything to do with email, etc. They ask, but they are pretty impatient when I (apparently unreasonably) ask to look at the assignment or the computer or generally try to make sense of what they are asking me.

“Just tell me,” they say, huffing a bit.

I came away with the feeling that they would prefer it if I could shrink down to the size of one of the good fairies on the 1959 Disney Sleeping Beauty film and gently float above one of their shoulders, and maybe not even speak, just wave a wand and Poof! Problem solved, question answered. And then flit away as quickly as possible.

Parenting older teens/new adults seems to be a dance between being present and absent. The same seems true at the orientations. Hang around long enough for them to find their places. Fade into the background once they do. Be available if and when they might need me (but also be aware that I probably won’t have the answers they want, and never as quickly as they want, either).

Peering into my closet doesn’t offer answers. I opt for a khaki top and dark trouser shorts. I wonder what jewelry mothers of first year college students are supposed to wear—again, the goal is just enough to not stand out (as I might if I didn’t wear it). I squint at my collection (and jewelry feels like the wrong word for the random stuff I own—no jewels among them). I find some colored stones on a silk cord that almost match my earrings.

As the orientation leader beckons everyone into their groups, it is clear that I may be the one trying to fade into the background, but my children are the ones about to disappear.