For the year 2003, I got financial aid for my older son, Theodore, to go to college. We applied to Lander University, my alma mater, and on registration day, I called the business office, to be told, he was accepted, and to come on now, because the Spring semester was commencing. I woke him up, dread locks and all, and told him to get ready, we had a five hour ride to Greenwood, South Carolina. We have friends there, a professor I knew from my own college days, and his lovely family, who follow Meher Baba.
We had stayed with them before, just on a visit, so it was no problem. I was ten years younger then. My son was twenty, and now he is thirty. I could still drive during the day, and I knew my way to Greenwood very well, because I had driven back and forth again and again, when I was a student there, long ago.
At the time, I had a dark green Honda Accord, a pretty nice vehicle, we got used, but it was newish and very reliable.
We got to Greenwood around night fall, and Dr. Phillips came to meet us out in the middle of no where. They lived kind of in the country.
I was a single mother, and I had a son in the ninth grade as well, who my mother was looking after, because he had to go to school. So, I had two dependents basically.
We got up early. As usual, the Phillips were really good to us, fed us, have a comfortable home, and are really nice people.
We followed Dr. Phillips to the campus, and got registered. He got Dr. Phillips for English 101, which was nice, and he even was able to stay with them once, because he was far from home there.
He did not decide a major. We just signed up for the usual Freshman courses. We went to the student center for lunch, the same one I used to eat at. We went to the book store and bought his text books, part of the financial aid.
We went to his dormitory, Brookside. When I had been there, that had been the fancy dorm, but now it was run down, and the not so fancy, least expensive dorm, for boys anyway. They had bulldozed some of the ones there that I had lived in. Mostly, I had lived in Chipley Hall.
He had a loft in there. It was one room for two boys, but there was a latter, which led to a bed, which was his, since the other was taken.
After that, we went to his first class of the day, Art, or life drawing, which had been one of my favorite. He had the same art professor I had had, and that I had traveled on a study, group tour with, to Mexico in '81, the end of my three years at Lander, before I went to CCU, Mr. McTaggart. I introduced them. After he was settled in his class, I went to see Dr. Cleland.
This was my final stop, before going home to my other boy. Dr. Cleland had also chaperoned the Mexico trip, and he had actually been my professor of Mexican History, for which I got credit for on the trip, listening to his lectures as we went to see pyramids and such. We had gone to Mexico City, Guanajato, the state where I was born, had traveled to the Yucatan, Merida, the Mayan pyramids, and back to Mexico City. Also, we had gone to San Migel de Allende, where there was a beautiful art institute there in the mountains. I had stayed with Dr. Cleland's family before that trip, and he was really nice. It was good to see him again after so many years, and I had taken Freshman Seminar with him as well.
Ted decided not to go back after one semester. I guess college is not for everyone, and no one can be faulted for that, but I am glad he went to my alma mater, and proud that he got in.
Well, after seeing Dr. Cleland, it was on the road again back home. And, my son was left to get the college experience, at least for a while.
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