This Family Weekend was the first of many lasts as our daughter embarks on her senior year at Northwestern. As we pulled out of the driveway to take that familiar seven-hour trip to the big city, we were filled with excitement and a little sadness to being spending our last Family Weekend with our daughter, her friends and the lifelong friends we have made at NU.
The word “friend” includes not just the people, but the familiar experiences and events we have made into tradition in the past four years. Oh yes, this includes familiar faces, such as the hotel clerk who knows us by name now, and the waiter at Clarke’s where we eat the best breakfast in town. It includes eating dinner with the parents of our daughter’s best friend and her family as well. I can’t forget the “sons and daughters” we’ve adopted along the way through our daughter’s friendships, who have become like family not just to her, but to us, too.
The experiences have become tradition and make us feel at home: hopping on the El and enjoying conversation on the way to our favorite shopping spots on Michigan Avenue, and ending the day with the sunset view from the top of the John Hancock Center. Cheering on the Wildcats from our end zone seats, sipping hot chocolate and humming the tune to the fight song because I still don’t know the words. Taking a walk along the lake shore, viewing the beauty of the campus in the full color of fall. Walking past the Rock on the way back to see how crazy it has been painted. Crossing through the Arch just to say you did. Buying a new sweatshirt at the campus bookstore, or maybe two or three this time because it’s our last year here. Seeing your child have the time of her life and living it through her eyes.
These are just a few of the things we will miss when our daughter takes her final walk in her cap and gown next spring. As we dropped her off before the long trip back home, we said out loud and know it for sure — what we had been hoping four years ago when we left her with tears in our eyes for the first time — Northwestern is a great place! Thanks for the memories!
— Rene Abels
Mother of Medill senior Jessica Abels
