Riot of Passage (Sorry, Dad)

There’s nothing like the first day of school. When I was a child, my parents would walk me to my new classroom each year to help me get settled. It was a fun tradition, one that made me feel comforted and loved. The problem, however, is that the hand-holding never really stopped.

I guess my parents did lay off during my junior high and high school years. But when I started college at Brigham Young University in 1995, they went right back into kindergarten mode. They drove up with me from Arizona, helped me move into my dorm, and then waved goodbye to the other parents who – politely and appropriately – left their children behind.

My parents just stayed. Did you know that, before they were demolished, Deseret Towers used to have rooms that they would rent out to campus visitors? My parents stayed in the dorms – my dorm – for days, wallowing in nostalgia and self-pity. As any selfish teenager would do, I stayed busy and pretended not to know them. That got a little trickier when my dad insisted on attending my first day of classes with me.

My dad’s really not the type of person who blends into a crowd. There he was, 6-feet, 5-inches tall, 44 years old, wearing a fanny pack (his must-have traveling accessory), sitting on the front row of the lecture hall with his mortified freshman daughter. He had a hard time staying quiet, too, “whispering” commentary during Biology 130 and “softly” correcting my religion teacher’s explanation of the Greek symbol the caduceus. (Yes, 13 years later, I remember the details. It was that traumatic.)

In fairness to him, I was his oldest child. And I was moving more than 300 miles away. Did he sense, back then, that his family was never going to be the same? That I would marry a Provo boy who, try as he might, simply couldn’t cut the apron strings (to his snowmobile!) and planned to live in Utah forever? That I was never coming back?

One of my dad’s favorite sayings is: “You can’t escape genetics.” Now that I have children of my own, I see my first day of college in a more sympathetic light. I can’t imagine saying goodbye to my baby. In fact, I won’t.

I truly plan to get a PhD before my oldest starts college so that – should he choose to study anywhere outside of Utah County – I can simply go with him. Maybe I’ll even teach one of his classes. Because the only thing more horrifying on your first day of college than your dad wearing a fanny pack and sitting on the front row is this: Your mom wearing a Britney Spears T-shirt, standing at the lectern.

-- Elyssa Andrus

A shortened version of this column appeared in the Daily Herald on page B1 on Aug. 27. Reprinted with permission.

Yuba Lake Part Two

These are pictures from our second Yuba Lake trip this summer. I think Trent and Noelle DeGroot, who also came, were asleep in their new camper or something, which is why I don't have pictures of them.



Tyler loves sand.

Dave and Elyssa.

Josh in the water.

Jenna Higbee.

Jen, Steve and Mindy Marx.

Jon and Kimberly Jonas.

After Yuba. Tyler ate an entire thing of licorice.

Tyler loves the sand, part 2.

Addie Jonas.

Jason and Preston Higbee.


Ben, Matson and Mykin Higbee.

A Fishy Situation

One thing I love about Utah -- particularly Utah County -- is it's pretty easy to be close to your neighbors. This is literally the case when you live in a subdivision and the houses are practically stacked on top of each other. We had a new family move in next to us a few weeks ago, and they are everything you could ask for in people who share your lawn. They have a cool family band that I've never heard practicing late at night, and a bunch of red-haired teenagers who look like they could be siblings to my children. Really, they are the best. Which is why I was only too happy to get their mail and pet-sit their goldfish while they went on vacation for a week. Picking up mail is no big deal. And I like to look at fish, but not eat them, so I figured that made me a great candidate for freshwater babysitter. I got a little nervous when the mom, Martha, told me that the goldfish were a couple years old, but I still figured I could handle it.

Wrong.
I actually kept the goldfish alive for almost the entire week. The morning my neighbors returned, I went in to give the fish their morning meal and found them belly-up. I kept hoping it was a funny animal trick -- something straight out of "Finding Nemo" -- but, alas. They were very, very dead. And I'm still not sure what I did to make them that way.
Talk about awkward. Hallmark has yet to make a greeting card for this kind of thing. There is no tasteful way to say, "I'm really, really sorry I killed the only living thing you've ever entrusted to me, but I promise to do better next time." Or, "I'm really, really sorry it took me a week to get rid of what you've spent the last three years carefully nurturing." Or, "Your fish are dead/As you can see/ Your big mistake/ Was trusting me."
On the bright side, proving my incompetence early on has likely gotten me out of years of neighborly favors. When the family at the end of the street needs someone to watch their pet ferrets while they go out of town, you can bet they won't be choosing me.
-- Elyssa Andrus

This column originally appeared in the Daily Herald on July 23, 2008.

Postlude: In church a few weeks ago, another neighbor bore testimony of how his child's fish was magically resurrected through prayer. Sure could have used him when I was blubbering over a stinky bowl.