Ty wasn’t Becky Doty’s first child to leave for college, but
that didn’t make his leaving any easier. He stayed with his family
until the last minute, helping younger brother Sam, 14, to corral
his prize hog at the state fair.
Ty wasn’t Becky Doty’s first child to leave for college, but that didn’t make his leaving any easier. He stayed with his family until the last minute, helping younger brother Sam, 14, to corral his prize hog at the state fair.
“He had to leave in the middle of things and I just cried and cried,” said Doty. “People were staring.”
The Hollister native is proud, but also anxious for Ty, who won a football scholarship to tiny Bethany College (620 students) in Lindsborg, Kansas.”So many of his friends, if they’re playing college ball at all, are red shirts,” said Doty, whose son, at 5’11” and 240 pounds, is already starting as an offensive lineman. “I’m nervous, especially on Saturdays when I know he has a game. I always liked to be there in case one of the boys got hurt. Now I worry about getting that phone call.”
With Ty out of the house, Doty is able to devote more time to her youngest son’s activities, and fills in extra time by volunteering at San Benito High’s concessions stand. She keeps up with her son’s games via Webcasts, huddling near the computer with the rest of the family to listen in on the local radio coverage.
With a projected 63 percent of all high school graduates headed off to college this year, Doty isn’t alone in feeling, well, alone. With one less voice in the house, it’s bound to feel a little bit lonely.
Janet Taylor’s daughter Maggie started at Chico State on Aug. 23, but the pangs of her leaving left Taylor weepy starting in July.
“I was really excited for her to go off and do what she dreamed about, but I didn’t want to see her go,” said Taylor, a Morgan Hill resident.
“Until you actual move them into their room, it doesn’t seem like they’re really going away, but you go out to dinner and ask for a table for four when there are only three of you. Every now and then you look up at the clock and wonder what class she’s in or what she’s doing.”
As a liberal studies major, Maggie is enjoying her newfound independence. The 18-year-old was nervous moving in to her dorm, mostly because she wasn’t sure of what to expect from her roommate and hadn’t been inside the building she’d be calling home for the next year. After she’d met her Resident Adviser and wandered the floor, unpacked a little and found some new friends things seemed easier.
“I’ve only been home once,” she said. “I thought I’d be really homesick, but I haven’t been homesick ever. I miss my parents I guess, but it hasn’t been all I think about, probably because I talk to them all the time.”
Danielle Perez, 21, left home in Hollister three and a half years ago to move south. She started off at Cal State Long Beach, but soon transferred to San Diego State where she is now a senior pursuing her degree in Integrated Marketing Communication. At first, the thing she missed most was the noise. Something was always going on in her house, and living alone in a studio apartment left her lonely for some commotion.
“She’d call me at 10 or 11 o’clock at night and say in that little voice of hers, ‘I just wanted to call and see what you were doing,'” recalled Perez’s mom, Jeanie Churchill. “I’d get that sick feeling in the back of my throat like I was going to choke up, but I’d say, ‘What’s up Danielle?’ and she’d say she was a little lonely. We’d talk for a little while, and I’d hang up the phone and just burst into tears.”
The resulting years have not dimmed Churchill’s grief over the distance she’s had from her daughter. She avoids letting her eyes rest on anything that Perez made as a child for too long. The bookmark that her daughter made in third grade still makes her bawl.
Perez was Churchill’s “bonus baby,” 10 years younger than her nearest sibling.
Maybe that is why Churchill has such a hard time letting go – her picture of Perez is one of perpetual youth and innocence, hardly the kind of thing a parent would want to send off into the harsh world of reality.
When Churchill misses her daughter, she comforts herself with the sight of another baby – her one-year-old grandson – who has an uncanny ability to cheer her up. And while her eldest daughter is going back to college, she’ll be commuting to San Jose State, so Churchill knows she’s “not going to move off into the wild blue yonder and take my granddaughter with her.”
Restructuring – indeed learning again how to live – hasn’t been easy for any of these parents, but they all take comfort in their children’s success.
For now, Taylor is enjoying the opportunity to watch her son Kevin, a freshman at Sobrato High in Morgan Hill, practice for the football team.
“At least now there are no more firsts,” she said.
