The 'Hostage' effect...
Uni for many, including me, is often the first time the offspring fly the nest fully. There was the obligatory phone call once a week to keep them updated on the exciting student world in the North West and all ticked along nicely.
Mum never has been one for getting emotional, and I hadn't expected much of a change in the first few weeks away in my first term - September to late December. Come the time to go home for the Christmas Holidays they insisted on picking me up from Norwich station when I arrived there.
As you may expect, it's a bit busy on the trains to say the least at that time of year, and stepping off the train carrying a rucksack and other various bags, I was trying to fight my way up to the platform to find the folks.
Then I saw her. And she saw me. Then something happened which has never happened since and I daresay would take some effort to happen again. In the middle of a packed Train station, in front of the best part of five hundred or so people, she broke down in tears of joy and ran up to me flinging her arms around me in a huge hug.
Surprise was the first emotion, closely followed by the realisation that people were glancing sideways at us as they hurried past. On reflection of that moment I had become the student equivalent of Terry Waite or John McCarthy in our Family and she was so happy to have me back home for a short while.
Slightly embarrassing at the time, but on reflection, a really nice thing :)
( The Great Architect is still waiting for his account to be deleted on, Fri 12 Feb 2010, 16:31, Reply)