Squirrel attack, revisited.

In which I reminisce about my son's first week at college.

COME AT ME, BRO.

It’s been almost two months—TWO MONTHS—since I posted here. This, of course, flies in the face of every bit of advice about how to grow your Substack following (if that’s something you want).

I have excuses. November was National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), and once again, I tried to “win” by writing 50,000 words, which I didn’t do, but I did write 25,000 words of my new novel, so that’s a win as far as I’m concerned. My client work picked up, too. Then our son came home from college for Thanksgiving weekend. Then it was December, and yesterday, he arrived for winter break.

His return got me thinking back to the beginning of the school year and an incident I described briefly in one of my posts about Families Weekend. It turns out that I had already drafted an entire post about this event, but I hadn’t posted it because…well, I don’t know. So here’s the post, rescued from my Drafts folder, along with an update.

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August 2023, Sometime During Orientation Week

We had our first medical emergency shortly after we dropped our son off at college for his freshman orientation. We learned things. Such as:

• The squirrels at C’s university, while plentiful and adorable, do not like to be petted (“it was so cute tho” read my son’s text).

• The university emergency medical services team will come to the site of an incident, in this case, a squirrel attack.

• If your child is under 18, you will have to give your permission for him not to be taken by ambulance to the medical center.

• Squirrels at C’s school do not have rabies. According to the CDC website, squirrels rarely do. I did not know this.

• Our son should consider becoming a spy, because it’s nearly impossible to get information out of him.

Here’s what happened. I came out of an appointment to a missed call from C and then a text consisting of the two words that strike terror in to the heart of any parent: “I’m fine.” Naturally, I called him immediately, only to get another text saying that he would call me later. When I got home, my husband was shaking his head and laughing. “Your son is an idiot,”¹ he said affectionately. “He tried to pet a squirrel.”

That night, I convinced C to FaceTime with me so he could see our cat, who he missed. I thought I could wring more details out of him once I saw his face.

He aimed the camera so that it showed only his eyes, forehead, and the ceiling. I felt like a detective with an uncooperative witness, only in this case, the witness was my own teenager.

“Did you get bit or scratched?” I asked.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, which made me worry more.

Unprompted, he aimed the camera at his bandaged finger. I didn’t see any blood seeping through the bandage, which I took as a good sign.

He aimed the camera at his white high tops. “Can I wash shoes?”

There were a few tiny brown spots on them. Dried blood.

“Yes, you can wash shoes,” I said, joyous that my wisdom was needed. “Wash them with towels so they don’t bang around.”

After we hung up, N and I laughed about The Squirrel Attack, but I’ll confess that my imagination dialed itself up to an 11 when I tried to sleep that night. What if the bite got infected, and C lost his finger? Was I being neglectful for not insisting that he go to Urgent Care? And the eternal question: Am I a bad parent?

Despite my determination to be a cool mom, after we dropped off our son at college and returned home to the now-empty nest, I started stalking him online like a lovesick teen. Thanks to the Life360 app, I could see where he was—his dorm, the football stadium, the social sciences building—at any time. I checked Life360 several times a day, not because I wanted to make sure he was going to class or anything like that, but just so I could say to myself, Oh, he’s in his dorm.

I rotated through Facebook parents groups (which require an entire post to themselves), Instagram stories, YouTube videos from his college. During orientation week, his dorm handed out brightly colored t-shirts to the new freshmen, so his group was easy to spot. I kept hoping he’d post a story himself, even though I don’t totally get Instagram stories. (Like, why would you want your story to disappear?)

My neediness caught me off guard. I wasn’t obsessed with his day when he was in high school, for chrissakes. Now I wanted to know every detail. Evenings were especially rough; I missed spending 30 minutes watching previews while arguing over what to watch. I even missed watching sports with him.

But: what about all the time I now had/have for writing! No teenager throwing open my office door to tell me about the latest Oakland A’s recruit debacle or Stanford football transfer, or asking me what show or movie we’re going to watch tonight! So much time freed up, now that I was watching less TV!

I try very hard not to be helicopter parent or a snowplow parent or whatever type of parent is over-managing their almost-adult children’s lives. How to Raise an Adult by

Julie Lythcott-Haims

made a huge impression on me. I joke that I’m a submarine parent: always lurking, only surfacing with necessary.

But in those early days of empty nesting, if I was a submarine, I might as well have been painted neon pink.

I spent hours trying to pretend I didn’t want to hear more from him. I tried to craft the perfect text to get a response while at the same time, trying not to text him too much. On the rare phone calls, I tried to play it cool and not ask too many questions. I didn’t want him to see calling me as a burden.

One night I even sent him a video of the cat making biscuits on my lap because I knew that would get a response. It did.

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December 2023

That’s about as much as I got of that draft post. Fast forward to current day: I’m happy to report that I calmed down, especially after Families Weekend. C started calling a few times a week at his father’s request (even though I told him he didn’t have to). I finished a revision, started a new book, and got busy with clients’ editing projects.

Towards the end of October, I heard my husband laughing in the living room. Laughing hysterically. Like almost crying.

“I just checked the orders in my Amazon account,” he said when he could breathe. “Look what our son bought.”

And he showed me this.

Yes, my son, who I thought had a teenager’s terror of being embarrassed in any way, had decided to dress as a giant squirrel for Halloween. Most of the people in his dorm and new friend group knew about The Squirrel Attack, so why not lean into his minor fame?

So that’s the full story. Parents, I’d love to hear the moment when you knew your kid was going to be okay.

Or, perhaps more importantly, when you knew you were going to be okay.

1. Of course we don’t really think our son is an idiot. But like most teenagers (and adults, including ourselves), he can occasionally do idiotic things.