Life of Wry

This was quite a day in the Frame:Peterson family. Highs, lows, some very tender spots. Too late to sort through all of it, so I shall just post a few photos and debrief maybe tomorrow.

Good with that?

Good.

We went to UC Santa Cruz..

(Apols to whoever’s car this is.)

Neither Jim nor I, and certainly not Peter, had ever set foot on the UCSC campus. Given it’s Peter’s choice for COLLEGE, a choice that is to be made official TOMORROW, it’s a good thing we made it down there. You hate to get out too early on these major life decisions.

This was our first gander at the campus:

This was the first of many times I said, “Whoa.. I had no idea…” referring to the campus environs.

I’d of course heard of the redwoods. They are not kidding when they say this campus sits in the middle of a forest, a very hilly one at that:

This is driving from one part of campus to another…

I swear, it was like driving in the mountains.

This is returning to where we’d parked our car, down near the so-called East Field.. part of the athletic complex where I hope Peter will spend a lot of time in non-academic pursuits:

So, yeah, vast pastoral plateaus, dense redwood forests, “infinity” fields that look out to the great Pacific ocean.  Ho hum.

We walked around a lot of residence communities–each its own college (there are ten). Because it was Saturday, we saw very few people anywhere. That didn’t feel so good, but I imagine during school time, it’s a little more energetic.

At one point, Jim and I went to look around “Science Hill.” Peter stayed in the car. (Part of the very difficult time our sweet son is having with this process.) We asked a young man if he could tell us where the physics building was. Jim mentioned we were looking on behalf of our incoming freshman son. He let us know our kid would love it here. I burst into tears (still bursting).

But seeing this part of campus turned everything around for me. Suddenly I could actually see Peter here.

This is the building, we think, that houses the physics department:

This is the library across the way:

We somehow missed some main part of the campus? Maybe a plaza, maybe the main library, maybe a more traditional-looking campus center?  Not quite sure where the energy hub is or where students gather, but we saw a good portion of the school anyway.

It’s pretty.

It’s not Manhattan, New York, New York. But college is about relationships, right? Oh, and classes.

We went down to Santa-Cruz-the-town and had dinner on Pacific Street. Lots of energy there. Peter’s still a little out of sorts (maybe you can tell), but starts to thaw out about this time…

Honestly.. it was just so difficult. I’ll try and articulate this later. But we all held it together pretty well, and gradually, he opened up.

On Paul’s recommendation, we got ice cream at Marianne’s:

And then checked out a random golf course (DeLaveaga), which definitely interested him. That was fun.

Then drove along W. Cliff  Drive, which was, of course, lovely, and watched some surfers:

Now, reasonably genuine, more or less relaxed smiles:

The ride home was sweet and good.

I’m just dyin’ here. I want him to be excited about his choice. But I’m sure it will all be fine.

Oh. And it was Jim’s birthday today.

One for the record books.