Memento mori

When I was 18 years old, I took all the money I'd saved over nearly two years at my minimum-wage job at the local ice cream shop--just over $2000--and bought a ticket for a 9-day trip to London. I'd never been out of the country before, had never flown on a plane before. My parents were calm. My mother took me to the store to pick out luggage and new shirts. On the day of departure, she dropped me off at school to meet the rest of the tour group. Looking back, I have to laugh at how ridiculously grown-up I thought I was then. I wouldn't say that I thought I was invincible, but I wasn't worried, either. I was a little bit nervous about the plane, but other than that, what could happen? I was going to be with teachers from my school the entire time.

When I was 22 years old, I borrowed $2000 from my parents and enrolled in a 6 1/2 week geological field course that my professors said I would need if I wanted to get into grad school. My parents were calm. My dad was pretty excited for me, since I was going to spend most of the summer at a field station in the mountains of Montana. On the afternoon before the caravan left Indiana, my parents and my fiance dropped me off to meet up with the rest of the field class--49 students I'd never met, plus one kid from my university who I didn't know well at all. But what could happen? It was school.

Now, my sister, nearly 21 years old, is planning to spend her summer at field school. She must feel ridiculously grown-up. She wants to spend the second semester of next year studying abroad in Ireland. Last week, I told my parents to be calm. I reminded them that I'd hopped a flight to London at 18, spent my summer in Montana at 23. Nothing had happened. She'll be fine. I realized that back when I was taking those trips, they were only calm on the outside. Inside, and when I wasn't around, they were worried.

I cannot imagine how parents can take this kind of thing, I especially can't imagine it today, not when I've spent hours trying not to read the reports coming out of Virginia. Will I ever be brave enough to shoulder that kind of responsibility, to risk a hurt that deep by letting my children leave my side? I used to think that parents only really had to worry about their kids until their kids were grown up. Now I know better. I look at my sister, and I don't just see the 20-year-old woman she is now. I see the roundheaded baby she used to be, the knobby-kneed stick-skinny little girl, the calmly self-assured teenager. It's killing me to think of kids just like her, just her age, going to class and never making it home. Going to class because it was school, and what could happen? My heart is breaking for them, and for their parents, who worried and worried, but knew they had to take the risk and let them strike out on their own. I want to wake up tomorrow and find out it's okay, that none of it really happened. Otherwise, how can anyone be expected to bear it?