I started to feel the edge of competitiveness a couple of weeks before the big weekend. My daughter, Brittany, is a freshman at Western Carolina University. She mentioned during a phone call that a friend’s parents had been up to visit and filled her friend’s refrigerator and left her a big check. The next week she mentioned that her roommate had gone home for the weekend and came back “stocked up.” I didn’t ask what she was stocked up with, because I didn’t want Brittany to know I was catching the hints.

But, of course, we did. We arrived at Western Carolina University early that Saturday morning with a big Halloween basket filled with goodies, a sack of Halloween decorations for her dorm room — since she had told me the dorm was going to have a decorating contest and invite local kids in to trick or treat — and a pair of earrings we had picked up for her on a trip to Blowing Rock the weekend before. There were parents everywhere. All were carrying huge loads of things into the dorms. It almost seemed like moving in day all over again.

OK, so maybe I hadn’t brought as much stuff as they did, but we would have so much fun that she would beg us to come back the next time, right? We took a picnic to Dillsboro, which was having an antiques festival and was all decorated for fall. It was charming and fun. Well, maybe more my kind of fun then hers .... so after the picnic I bought her a window decoration she liked for her room.

From there we took her to a play, “The Complete History of America, (Abridged),” which she was suppose to see and write a paper about for her theater class, but had waited for us to come and buy the tickets. It was a very funny play. At least her dad and I thought so.

Finally, after much talk about how the money on her meal card would certainly not last until the end of the semester, we took her shopping. Somehow among the boxes of macaroni and cans of soup she managed to sneak in a new coffee maker (her other one was too small), plus more shelves, beauty supplies, gum, and cases of diet coke. Now she looked like she was having fun.

Then we took her out to dinner — her choice — which was “anywhere she wouldn’t have been able to afford on her own.” After fixing some problems with her computer and putting all her new supplies away, we headed back to Hickory with the hoped for words ringing in our heads, “Today was great! You guys should come up more often.”

Which we will, as soon as we’ve paid this time off.

(Nancy Geiger lives in Hickory where she helps her husband with his Internet Consulting Business and is an active volunteer. She can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)