By Rachel Beachy 
Sometimes I miss college, but not for the reasons I thought I would. I miss going to class—but while I always enjoyed learning, it’s not the class itself I miss, but walking to it. Every day, I’d trek across campus through rain or snow or sun and call my mom. We would talk the whole way there. I don’t remember how our phone calls got started or most of what we said—it’s been over a decade since I graduated—but I remember it quickly became our routine. Ordinary. Every day, I got to touch base with her.
For four years in the sea of a big state school, through heartbreak and final exams and changing my major (twice), I had my mom’s company through it all. She was only a phone call away, and she always answered.
Some calls stand out when I look back: the time I called her in tears my freshman year because all of the pre-med classes I needed to take were full, which led to signing up for a random journalism class, which turned out to be the perfect combination of my passion for writing and interest in the world. The call my sophomore year when I got accepted into a dream study abroad program in London for the summer. And the call in the dead of winter my junior year after I met a boy for coffee at the student union. “He wants to take me to the basketball game later tonight,” I told her. “I don’t think it’s a date, though…should I go?” And my mom, who knows me so well, said of course I should go. To just have fun. And I did—on that night and many more afterward. Something about him just clicked. I’ll never forget when I ran into that same boy a few days later on campus, and he was on the phone. “Hey, Mom, I’ll call you back,” he said when he saw me, and I felt every green flag go up. Two weeks after graduation, I married him.
Eleven years later, we are married with three young daughters of our own. My days are full of the things I used to dream about back then—work I care about, a family I love, our home. I’m no longer walking across campus, but I still call my mom almost every day. Only now, our conversations are often interrupted, cut short by the little girls who call her “Lolli” and want to talk to her as much as I do. So I let them, for as long as they want, knowing that someday, they will grow up and go out into the world too. I just hope when they leave, they have the feeling I did. That no matter what direction they are headed, they can always pick up the phone and call me. That wherever life takes them, they can always find their way home.
by Amanda Motisi 
by Zabrina Vogelsang 
