Leaving the Nest

A few weeks ago, when Gerrit and Afton were anticipating the start of school the next day, Ethan danced around the house, laughing gleefully, since they had to go to school and he didn’t. Gerrit and Afton were much more gracious Friday morning, though, when they said goodbye to him as Shannon and I drove him up to Rexburg to start his college career at BYU-Idaho.

After Ethan graduated from high school this past spring, our bishop had mentioned to him that he would like to see Ethan ordained an elder before he headed out for school in the fall. Not much happened on that front for the whole summer, so I figured it wasn’t going to happen. I did remind him about it a little while back, so he made an appointment to talk to the bishop. I figured the bishop would give him some things to work on to prepare, and I hoped the ordination might happen over Christmas break or something.

Shannon and I were a bit surprised last Sunday morning that Ethan seemed not to be in the house at an hour that would normally find him cocooned in his bed. One advantage of having previously worked with security cameras is that I had evidence that he had, in fact, come home the night before, and that he had left in the morning wearing his white shirt. We were more surprised when he came home saying that he’d been at an interview with the stake president and that pending a sustaining vote in church, he was ready to be ordained that day. It was my best birthday present that I was able to do that ordination.

A few days later we packed up the car and headed north. Ethan had a bed reserved in “Centre Square”, a brand-new on-campus apartment complex that looked more like “Chaos Square” when we arrived. There were cars double and triple parked (in fire lanes), and mobs of clothes hamper and bedding toting young people.

We met some of his roommates, who seem like good guys. They even helped haul in Ethan’s stuff once we found a place to bring the car up. Then one of them told him they were supposed to go to an orientation thing, and he and Ethan were off. Shannon and I hung out in his room, resisting the urge to unpack all his things and put them away since this needed to be his space. Eventually we went to have lunch with our niece Amy, who lives just a Tanner Mangum pass away from Ethan.

I thought we’d catch up with Ethan again for the BYU-Idaho Welcome meeting with new university president Clark Gilbert and his wife. I was wrong. The meeting was great, making me feel so glad that our boy is going to school at a place where the Spirit is such a large part of the experience, but we were distressed that Ethan was missing it. His responses to our texts asking where he was were pretty non-specific: “Stuck somewhere”. Ethan assured us later that he had been in the auditorium, but we didn’t see him again until dinner time, when (after more bedlam at Wal Mart securing some groceries) we picked him up to visit our nephew Jared and his wife, Rachel.

Jared and Ethan are both Computer Information Technology majors, and although Jared is a senior and Ethan a freshman, they spent a little time after dinner jiggling Ethan’s class schedule so that they could take a class together.

Saturday morning, Shannon and I said our farewells to our boy, and headed for home. Intellectually, I realize he isn’t here, but I’m not sure if it has really sunk in. He often had to work Saturday evenings, and would sometimes retreat to his room to read on Sunday afternoons, so it hasn’t felt too different yet.

Gerrit, however, did start having wicked plans of sending his brother a text saying, “Ha, ha! You have to go to school tomorrow!”