Worries abound for even the garden variety college parent. For WP parents, even with a cadet safely tucked away at the Fortress-on-the-Hudson, there are extra worries aplenty. But for the parent of a cadet abroad, the dreads are epic.
Take all of the run-of-the-mill, add WP+, and then throw in troubles with travel schedules, visas, passports, itineraries, plane tickets, missed flights, lost reservations, strange cultures in foreign languages, unreliable internet connections, spotty communication, illnesses treated with unknown meds, identity theft, blocked debit cards, dead phones...and the Fear Factor rises to biblical proportions.
It isn't that every one of these things goes wrong. It's that every one of them could, and you can be pretty sure some of them will. In my case, enough of them already have, and there is nothing to be done about it. Not by me, anyway. My part is to pray, and at least that's something I can do fairly well.
Such troubles and snags as have occurred have been admirably handled by my competent cadet, and there is no reason to expect anything different, so... So far, so good.
M is due back at West Point in another week or two, and then a small leave before he heads off, unbelievably, to his last West Point summer.
I am sooooo excited about having him safe at home, and I have plenty of company: a whole army of moms that can't wait till the cows come home.
