Acceptance

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross would tell you that acceptance is the last rung on the ladder: the final stage. This may be true for grief, but when it comes to college, it's really only the beginning. That is because getting that letter in the mail, or in our case the message in our in-box, is just the beginning. After months of what intermittently felt like agonized waiting and feigned ambivalence, my son was accepted into the college of his choice. This came as such a relief for all of us that we spent a week or two celebrating what had, at one time, been a foregone conclusion: our son would go to college. What this email did, over the next few weeks, was set a whole new stage of this process in motion. We were suddenly confronted with this question: What if he gets accepted by another school? Or two? The choice seemed so crystal clear for that time when there was only the one alternative. Okay, two if you consider not going to school and working at the auto parts store while he continues to work on his music career.
Meanwhile, other letters and notices have come trickling in: A couple straight-out rejections and a school in Illinois that was pleased and happy to inform our son that he had been accepted to their wait list. The college which had initially accepted him had all kinds of things going for it: California, friends from high school, a campus he had visited previously. Why would he want to double down on a maybe? As it turns out, there is no obligation in taking this wait list spot. We can continue to scurry about in our way, imagining life a year from now when our son is "away at school," and wait to see if this Illinois offer becomes any more real.
The California offer is very real. So real in fact that we are now in the midst of preparing a financial package. This new challenge has me thinking that a piano playing auto parts store employee would be a fine addition to the family. But what we really want is a college graduate. Since that first day of preschool, when he stood on the front porch with his horsey backpack, getting ready to go out and face the world in front of him, his mother and I have wanted him to go as far as he could on the path he chose.
Which makes me think of the path I am on. The one where I spent five and a half years earning a bachelor's degree in Creative Writing. Sure, you the reader benefit mightily from this choice, but I wonder how my parents felt about financing all those "Film as Fiction" classes, and the opportunity to write yet another paper about "Bartleby the Scrivener." And now, nearly thirty years from the date of my commencement, I'm getting ready to return that favor to my progeny. Paying it forward. After acceptance? Payment, I guess.