Monday morning, JP is going to take a look at Furman University. There, he's going to have lunch with his former track and cross country teammate, Jack Wallace, meet and talk to one of the cross country/track coaches, and tour the campus.
Strangely enough, I visited Furman many, many years ago, on one of the only college trips my mom and I took together. I can't recall who stayed with Tracy and Alice. If memory serves, over the Thanksgiving holiday my senior year (November 1983), my mom and drove to Winston-Salem, NC (Wake Forest), Greenville, SC (Furman), and Boone, NC (Appalachian State). Odd combination of schools.
If all goes according to plan, on Monday evening or Tuesday morning, we'll drive to Spartanburg, SC, so JP can visit Wofford University. He's scheduled a tour there, too, although I don't think he's heard back from any of the coaches.
If it works out, we're going to try to stay in Brevard, NC, during the middle of the week. An old high school friend of mine owns a house in the mountains in Brevard, and I'm trying to see if we can work out a visit there. It's not a week at 30A and the beach, I know, but it would give all of us two or three well earned days to relax and unwind.
On Saturday, JP is going to visit Clemson. Charlie Warner, a friend a former cross country teammate, is a freshman there, along with another boy from MBA. I'm not sure how interested JP is in going to school at Clemson but I think he's looking forward to seeing Charlie and taking a look at the campus. Truthfully, I'm looking forward to seeing Clemson, too, as I've only seen it on television during football games. It's supposed to be a pretty campus.
Earlier in the school year, Jude and JP visited the University of Texas and Rice University. A month or so ago, they did a mid-west tour and visited the Indiana University, University of Illinois, Notre Dame, and Butler University. He took a side trip to Wake Forest after NXR in the fall.
Last year, JP and I visited Ohio State University on a cold, cold Saturday morning before the Vols played the Buckeyes in the CFP. In past years at NXR, JP has visited Duke, North Carolina, and North Carolina State.
There's an aimlessness to it all that I find unsettling, which I guess is normal. I'm told by friends that JP will know which college or university is right for him as soon as he steps on campus. Maybe so, but since he wants to run in college, that adds an extra layer of complexity to the mix. Academics, athletics, scholarships (academic or athletic), and most importantly, a place where JP wants to live and go to school for four or five years.
It's a lot. At least, it feels like a lot to me right now. On the one hand, picking a college is such an important decision. I don't think I would trade my 4 + years in Knoxville, at UT, for anything. I guess I would have had just as much fun, and learned as much, somewhere else, but it seems like my life would have turned out differently had I gone to Vanderbilt, for example. It's the road not taken, I suppose.
On the other hand, JP is going to be the same great kid - young man, actually, as he turns 18 in two weeks - wherever he attends college. That I know for sure.
Maybe what's unsettling to me, too, is that my time with JP is running out. By that, of course, I mean our time together when we see and talk to each other every day. My time with JP living in our house will soon be at an end. Actually, that's more than unsettling, it's almost unfathomable. Honestly, it's hard to think about or to conceptualize. But I know it's coming, though. I know it's coming.
It's funny. You work so hard as a parent, to teach your child well. To help him or her grow, mature, succeed, handle failure, and become an adult. Then, they say goodbye and go off to college and it's never the same. Not like it was.
And your heart is forever broken by the inexorable march of time.
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