Chapter 1: My Parents Gain A Bedroom

You wonder, sometimes, how you get into these situations. Looking back, I have to believe that, somewhere along the timeline of my life, I was led to this point, that I would be here no matter how I led my life. But I digress...

Sometime during the summer after my senior year of high school, I stopped thinking of myself as a high school kid. Maybe it was the business I had set up, and maybe it was the anticipation of playing soccer at the college level. Or it could have been that I was getting more mature, the third and least likely possibility. One thing was certain, though, and that was my girlfriend, the luscious Kayla Lehigh, was somehow directly responsible.

And just when I needed her, she was not with me. I was in my parent's car, headed down to the University of Florida. My dad was driving, and my mother was calmly knitting in the shotgun seat. My brother Stephen was zoned out with his headphones on, listening to something obnoxious, and I was sitting next to him, holding my soccer ball in my lap and missing my girl. My older brother, Michael, was still at home. He was working full-time and couldn't take time off to come with us. Actually, he was probably just as glad that he couldn't come along. It would have been a tight squeeze with one more person in the car anyway.

It was a two-day trip to Florida for us, which seemed to make it even more painful, as I had nothing better to do than to think about stuff. I missed Kayla so much there was an ache in my solar plexus that felt like it would never be healed, and yet the thought of playing soccer for Pickett Cropper and the Florida Gators left me with a mild case of vertigo. How had I, a middling defensive player, managed to win a scholarship to one of the elite soccer programs in the country? It was still a mystery to me. I had a lot of hours in the back seat of the car, watching the flat farm fields of Illinois and Indiana slowly turn into the lush green pastures of Kentucky and the worn hills of Tennessee and North Carolina. By the time we reached Georgia, I had tired of so much introspection, and had taken to alternating between reading and gazing out the window as the landscapes and small towns rolled by.

My family and I made it to Gainesville without incident, other than a little lingering depression on my part over what I was leaving behind. My parents had two rooms at a Holiday Inn near the campus reserved for two nights. My parents took the room with the queen- sized bed, and Stephen and I would share the second room, one with two twin beds. We checked in after dark and found a small restaurant within walking distance, where we could grab some dinner. None of us felt much like getting back in the car to drive to get something to eat, so we made do with what we could find nearby.

Moving day, when we would set up my new living quarters, was the next day.

We got up the next morning and walked down to the same diner we had eaten at the night before. Dad ordered pancakes, Mom had a bagel and some fruit, and Stephen and I ordered French toast, a real treat for us. We didn't often go out for breakfast.

There were only a couple of dorms where the athletes were going to live, and the streets around them were busy with kids and families shuffling for the prime parking spots for unloading vans, trailers, and cars. We decided we would wait until after lunch before we would join the fray, so Stephen and I got to be lazy in the morning. We took advantage of the pool at the hotel, and then we piled into the car once again for the short trip over toward the center of the university grounds. We wandered around campus during the late morning, admired Lake Alice, and stopped for lunch at Reitz Student Union, just soaking up the university culture.

Right after lunch we pulled our U-Haul into a designated spot on the street, and the four of us started carting my stuff up to my third- floor dorm room.

I knew my roommate's name was Weston Bridges, and I knew that he was from the Atlanta area, and he was on the swimming team, but that was about all I knew. Since swimming was a winter sport, he didn't have to be on campus early like I did, so he wasn't moving in for another few days. I took the opportunity to get my stuff put away without having to worry yet about sharing space. It was a small room for one person, much less for two, but I hoped we would be able to work it out okay.

My mom organized my closet for me while my dad and I put together the framework to loft our beds. Stephen was in charge of hanging my posters and pictures on the walls. By dinnertime we were pretty much finished, and I clambered up onto my bed, now six feet up in the air, and carefully pasted a photo of Luscious on the ceiling, right above me. I wanted Kayla to be the first thing I saw every morning, and the last thing I saw every night.

Jesse Wilhoit came up to my room as we were finishing up, and he came to dinner with us that night. He brought along his roommate, another soccer player by the name of Bryan Watkins. Jesse and Bryan eased my transition from home to college life that evening with their stories about their freshman year at school. It kept my parents, and especially my mother, from getting too emotional about packing off their middle son.

The next morning my family headed back home. Dad shook my hand, Stephen pretty much ignored me, and my mother hugged me fiercely, tears running down her face.

"Aw, Mom," I said, as embarrassed as only a new college freshman can be. "Don't cry. Don't think of it as losing a son, think of it as gaining a bedroom."

Well, that didn't seem to help much but, finally, she let me go and reluctantly got in the car.

Dad slipped me fifty dollars when Mom was turned away, as he shook my hand once more.

"Don't forget to write your mother often, son," he reminded me. "Make my life easier, would you please?" He grinned ruefully and opened his car door.

Stephen apparently had been hanging back for a reason, looking around as if he didn't have a care in the world. When Dad got in and closed the door, he turned to me and awkwardly hugged me.

"I'm proud of you, Sean," he whispered roughly. "I'm never going to be able to go to college, so you're gonna have to have fun enough for both of us."

I hugged him back, surprised and gratified at his gesture. "What do you mean, you won't be able to go to college? Get your grades up and you'll be fine."