Goodbye to all that

Carenza has completed her degree and left Oxford.

When I started writing this blog, the twins were in their last year at school and I was getting maudlin about a whole landslide of “last”s.  Last school concert,  last parents’ evening.

Some of the lasts weren’t lasts at all. We have continued to rally the complete set of offspring for summer holidays.  Until now, anyway. 

However, as Carenza’s undergraduate life came to an end, I was experiencing another set of lasts.

The question is, were they mine or hers?

I had to confess that it was like saying farewell to my own university days once more.

After a mere deluge of hints, Carenza graciously invited me for a last sleepover earlier in the spring and we went to a cocktail bar on a roof overlooking twinkling Oxford.  Fortunately afterwards I didn’t have to re-enact my student experience of sleeping on other people’s floors as Carenza let me have her bed.

A few weeks ago, Nigel, Perran and I had moved Carenza’s worldly goods from the highest, furthest corner of her accommodation block out to our car and she was about to lock up for the last time.

“Don’t you want to go back in and say good-bye to your room?”

“No, Mum, I did all that last night.”

So it was me who quickly darted back in and said, “Good bye, little room. It’s been fun.”