University Blues

Here’s the good news. Applying to college is easier than applying to kindergarten. Here’s the bad news. Zack, who not long ago fit on my forearm in a football hold, is leaving home.

“I get Zack’s phone line,” says Gabe, 14.

“I get to move to Zack’s lower bunk bed,” says Danny, 10.

But Jeremy, 12, says what we’re all really thinking. “I’m mad that Zacky’s going away to college.”

We’re in denial, of course, that this family-altering departure is imminent. Instead, we concentrate on the process. On learning the difference between early decision, early action and rolling admissions.

Between SAT I and SAT II, AP and ACT. On selecting appropriate “likely,” “reach” and “dream” schools. On filling out applications and adhering to deadlines. And, now, on waiting — until March 1 for the University of California schools and April 1 for the rest.

“It only seems easier than applying to kindergarten because I’m doing all the work,” Zack protests.

Yes, that’s true.

Applying to college is a complicated, anxiety provoking and ultimately arbitrary undertaking, not unlike selecting a spouse. You make a detailed list of desired personal qualities and physical traits. You ponder what’s essential and what’s negotiable. And at the end of the day, you go with your gut feeling — and with who wants you.

But it’s also true that there are many more colleges in the United States than kindergartens in the San Fernando Valley. And, as my husband, Larry, says, usually about relationships but not inapplicable here, “There’s a lid for every pot.”

Or, as James Fallows writes in the September 2001 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, “American colleges as a whole are grossly unselective. Of the country’s 3000-plus colleges, all but about a hundred take most of the students who apply.”

You’d never know that watching us parents scramble to get our kids into the “right” colleges, though not necessarily what’s “right” for them. In the process, we support a rapidly expanding industry of college consultants, prep courses and how-to manuals that help us package and market our teens like so many competing brands of toothpaste.

But unlike kindergarten, where, as a naive and neurotic first-time mother, I believed not getting into the “right” school would have disastrous and irreparable consequences, I now know there is not one “right” college. Rather, there are many good choices, all with plusses and minuses.

Larry and I refrained from taking Zack on a whirlwind cross-country tour of colleges. After all, as Zack says, “Architecture is not going to determine what school I go to.” Plus, we figured we could always visit after the acceptances arrive.

But last month, I did accompany Zack to the northwest corner of Massachusetts to visit Williams College, one of his top choices. I thought, as a city boy, he should see a small liberal arts college in a town of 8,000 people, a quarter of them students. And, as a Southern California boy, he should experience first-hand a wind chill factor of zero.

I watched Zack as he carefully scoped out the school, trying to determine if he would fit in and make friends. If he could handle the workload. If he would be happy living in Williamstown.

And I realized, consciously and sadly, how difficult this transition is — for Zack and for our family. I understood why, before we left, Danny said, “I hope you hate Williams. Then you won’t go there.”

Neither Judaism nor the secular world offers a meaningful ritual to mark an 18-year-old’s departure from home, an important and wrenching rite of passage.

Yes, there are graduation ceremonies and awards banquets, Senior Proms and Grad Nights at Disneyland. But these celebrate the end of high school and recognize academic, athletic and social achievements.

These don’t address the fact that Zack will never return home in quite the same way. That he will be physically separated from us; from his grandparents, aunts and cousins; and from Jake, Linda and friends he’s relied on since elementary school. He will be emotionally uprooted from his familiar support system.

These don’t address the fact that he won’t be with us at High Holy Day services next fall and probably Thanksgiving. He won’t be giving Gabe sartorial advice, complimenting Jeremy on his highlighted and spiked hair or watching Danny intently guard the soccer goal. And he won’t be driving to Ralphs to pick up a half-gallon of milk.

Larry and I recognize not only that we’re closer to moving into the Jewish Home for the Aging but also that our control is waning. We hope that we have raised a solid citizen and a committed Jew, that we have fulfilled the injunction, in Proverbs 22:6, to “Train a child in the way he should go, so when he is old he will not depart from it.”

Yes, Zack is looking forward to stepping into adulthood.

“Mom, I’m 18,” he constantly reminds me. “I can drive, vote, serve in the army and buy a lottery ticket. Next year I’ll be gone.”

Then he hesitates. “But, Mom, you’ll do my laundry for me next year, won’t you?” he asks. “I can mail it to you.”

“You will, won’t you?”