From: Will Ford To: undisclosed-recipients:; Bee: ' ' < Subject: Unprepared Date: Thu, 08 May 2014 19:37:00 +0000 Unprepared Rob Lowe on sending his son off to college. By Rob Lowe '',Rob Lowe and his son.Rob Lowe and his Matthew. 125k 13k 74 Photo councsy of Rob Lowe As the school year winds down and many parents of high school seniors prepare to send their kids off to college in the fall, Slate wanted to share one father's experience of coming to terms with this next chapter in parenthood. That father just happens to be Rob Lowe. The following is an adapted from Lowe's memoir, Love Life, published by Simon & Schuster in April. I'm trying to remember when I felt like this before. Like an elephant is sitting on my chest, like my throat is so tight and constricted that I can feel its tendons, like my eyes are 100 percent water, spilling out at will, down pathways on my face that have been dry for as long as I can think of. I'm trying to remember: When was the last time my heart was breaking? The death of my mother was one time, but her passing was prolonged enough to let me prepare for it, to the extent anyone can. At the most intense moment, sitting at her gravesite, I felt like I could hear every leaf blower in a 50-mile radius, felt as if I could feel the sun's rays turning my skin darker shades with each second, my skin irritated and jumpy, making me want to crawl out of it. I'm feeling it all now again, but no one has died. When I was a boy, I had to leave my friends in the summer, just as Malibu was becoming Malibu, say goodbye to my first girlfriend and go to Ohio to stay with my dad. There is a little of that sense memory at play too, a feeling that I'm about to be left out of important events, separated from life as I know it, the world as I love it. I am remembering and feeling the details of my parents' divorce and our family's forced march out of my home to an alien world across the country. The goodbyes to my father and my be