There's No Place Like Home (From College) For The Holidays

As the song says, “there’s no place like home for the holidays.”

I never fully appreciated the song’s sentiment until this year when both of my kids rolled in from college to reclaim the upstairs as their own.

It’s been great having them home and we had a wonderful Christmas but I never realized how small our house was or maybe how big my kids had become.

This shouldn’t be too much of a surprise for me since I traveled home from college for five years. I was glad to be home but I think I was more grateful that the twenty-one hour drive in my twenty-one year old car was over.

After the initial greetings, my first observation would be how small the house seemed. Almost nothing had changed but the ceiling seemed lower and the stairs shorter. The illusion soon wore off and I hauled my stuff up to my old bedroom.

Home cooking was certainly appreciated but my own room was the thing I appreciated most when coming home from college. It was big and quiet and had the most comfortable bed in the world even if was old and lumpy.

Another vivid memory of coming home from college was waking up to the familiar sounds of my parents puttering around in the kitchen and rustling the morning newspaper. I’m not much of a coffee drinker but the sound and smell of percolating coffee can transport me back to that small upstairs bedroom.

Now that the roles have been reversed, I find myself hearing the familiar sounds of children, make that young adults, upstairs.

There was a time when I could hear the sound of two tiny feet hitting the floor above us – even in the dead of night. I would wait for the sound clues to determine if I needed to get up. There might be the patter of feet coming down the stairs followed by a soft knock on the bedroom door. Then again there might be more of a moaning sound followed by a sad call for mom, which meant she would comfort and I would clean up.

Now the late night sounds upstairs come from my son John and his friends as they cheer through games of FIFA Soccer and episodes of the Jimmy Fallon Show. Even my ritual of waiting up for the kids has changed. It is a losing proposition trying to stay awake as they operate on college time so I now go to sleep hoping the phone doesn’t ring.

My daughter Susan, who just returned home from her first semester at Texas Tech, admitted that the absolute best part about being home was sleeping in her own bed. I would have been offended if I hadn’t sat on her rock hard dorm bed last October.

One thing that hasn’t changed from my college days to theirs is the juggling of social time with friends and family. Vacation may be time to spend with family but it’s also time to catch up with high school friends and stay connected to new college friends. Add girlfriends or boyfriends into the equation and the quality time with mom and dad quickly gets divided.

After a few weeks my thoughts would start turning away from home and back towards my alternate life at college. I am sure my kids will feel the same way in a few weeks as they look to return to their own routines.

For now I am just going to enjoy the sounds of late night TV while my kids wake to the smell of our Keurig coffee maker and the rustle of the newspaper. In truth, they are more likely to wake to the smell of soup for lunch and the sound of dad raking leaves but that’s a column for another day.