Minus one

It wasn't horrible and it wasn't great. It. was. just. fine. It took us longer than we thought to get to North Carolina what with bathroom, food, and gas stops. We didn't get there until the next morning. One AM to be exact. We fell right into bed and then it was morning and time to head back out again to move Madison into her dorm.

We joined the long line of cars backed up out on the road on campus to get into her dorm. Madison told us later that she felt very anxious and nervous and was texting her friend who still had six days before she left home. I was feeling very calm. I had a job to do and do it I would. We inched forward for twenty minutes until we were at the check-in point and we received our 40 minute parking pass and drove into the lot.

Each of us took a hand full of belongings and entered the dorm where we found 293857790 people waiting to use the elevator. "Let's take the stairs!" I shouted doing my best to be positive and uplifting, and the man overseeing the elevator pointed us outside to the stairwell. Where we walked up four flights of 53, yes 53, steps. Did I mention we were carrying huge bundles of stuff in our arms? I was huffing and puffing when we got to the top and volunteered to watch the stuff we dropped put beside Madison's locked door while the rest of the crew went in search of keys and more stuff.

Madison was suppose to be in the Honors dorm, but there was an overflow of 53 students (Madison being one of those 53) and they were placed in the dorm next to the Honors dorm. Instead of a suite in a modern building she ended up in a hotel style quad in an older building. Instead of central air she got window units. Instead of four girls to a bathroom she got eight to one bathroom. Instead of a large room she got a medium size one. We weren't sure what to expect, but the view from her balcony wasn't bad.

I waited for several minutes before the crew returned back up the four flights of 53 stairs their arms loaded with more stuff from the car. Madison had the keys and she opened the door to her new home and we all crowded inside to take a peek. Two beds. Two desks. Two chairs. One wall covered in built-in shelves and closets. On the floor was the carpet I had ordered from a company out of New Jersey that works with the university and delivers said carpet into the room. I volunteered to open the packaging and unroll the rug while they carried more items up the 53 stairs, but by then her roommate and her parents and sister had arrived. The room was quickly crowded with all eight of us introducing ourselves.

The two girls unrolled the rugs and then joined the dads in lofting the beds. Darcy and the other sister continued unloading the car. The mother and I took charge of overseeing all of them as they did the various jobs. Once the beds were lofted and the items all upstairs the dads went outside to bond and the rest of us went to work inside the dorm. Darcy and I emptied bins of clothes and hung them. We organized her desk, her closet, her drawers, and made her bed. Madison put furniture together and hooked up the refrigerator, the microwave, and the coffee pot. It didn't seem to take any time at all and we made lists of all the things the two girls needed that we didn't have. We were done a little past lunch time.

We thought the room was bigger than expected and Madison's anxiety was quickly replaced with excitement. The roommate and family left before we were finished. They live only an hour and a half away so they were "cutting the cord" after lunch and shopping. We left later, had lunch, and purchased more stuff. We went back to the dorm and finished the job. The roommate joined us for dinner and then we bid Madison good-night. She had planned to stay with us that night in the hotel, but felt guilty leaving her roommate behind. We agreed we would hook up the next day and we left.

The university had activities on campus for the next several move in days so hooking up with her turned out to be between activities. She was busy in the morning so Tom took us to his alma mater to show us how "much better a school it was". He claimed to know the way, but I had to use the GPS after several turns to "go the quickest route". He refused to believe thirty years had made much of a difference in the state and in his memory.

It was very quiet on this campus. We saw only a handful of students and had no issues parking and wandering around. Tom took us into the new library that he and Madison had toured a year ago. It was quite modern and quite impressive.

 

I looked up the move-in day for NC State and it was that very day, but we saw very little signs of students moving into dorms. The university is very large and very spread out, but still I thought I would see more signs of life.

We headed back to Chapel Hill and picked up Madison for lunch. She regaled us with stories of the activities she had been involved in the night before and that morning. Later she was planning on golfing in the library, dancing in the pit, and taking a party bus to Target for shopping. I could see that trying to cram those activities in with visiting with us was causing her concern so after we dropped off Tom at the airport to fly home I made things easier for her. I told her that Darcy and I could stay the next two nights as planned or the two of us could head off on a little adventure of our own. She agreed that she needed to do the things on campus and find her classes for the next week so we shopped at a mall for a couple of hours and crammed in lots of hugs.

We parked in the lot outside her dorm and hugged and kissed 7564999 times. She would hug her sister and then hug me and then hug her sister and then hug me. We did this for hours until I pushed her in the direction of her dorm, told her to be smart and safe, and to have tons of fun. She waved, blew us kisses, and then turned and walked off. She didn't look back. Darcy and I drove away sniffling. And just like that we were a family of three.