Fledging

The right pre-school, elementary, middle-school and high school, the vaccinations and examinations and medications, careful nutrition, museum visits and bedtime stories, the guinea pigs, country fairs, learning to swim, Girl Scout projects, basketball games, summer camp, ballet, church pageants, concerts, fevers nursed, bruises bandaged, piano lessons, driving lessons, computers and i-Pods and guitars and drum sets, and none of it mattered more than the year she was born. 1990 was the high point of the second baby-boom since the Second World War. The year our daughter was born thrust her square into the most competitive class of college freshmen ever. It was one thing we couldn’t change.

The letters are in. For a week it was all anyone we knew could talk about and then it was done. Decisions were made based on everything from geography to the almighty dollar. Committing to four years of college at the beginning of a recession is a leap of faith. But it is a leap we will take with abandon for our youngest child, our only daughter.

For months, her hopes were pinned on one school in Massachusetts. In the years since her visit to Harvard in sophomore year, realism had kicked in. She set her course for a small college in Norton, MA, halfway between Harvard Yard and Providence, RI. Physically, the school resembled a dollhouse version of Harvard, with lovely old brick buildings built around a central yard and anchored by a satisfyingly solid library with white columns and stone steps.

The music practice rooms were a dream, with a Steinway in every one. She pored over the course catalogue online. “Achilles and Spiderman Go To Town” was her favorite first-year seminar topic. She read the professor’s bios like some girls read Teen People, picking her favorite ones before she ever met them.

It was not the only school she applied to but it was the star she was guided by. It was also one of the only schools she and her best friend had in common.

As parents we fretted about that. What if one got in and the other did not? How many girls from a small New York City high school will get admitted to the same small college in New England?

They shared a cab to the admissions interview, held at an exclusive private girl’s school on the Upper East Side and were equally buoyed by the experience. They imagined sharing a dorm, studying in the yard and carpooling home for the holidays.

When the letters came last week, the best friend did what best friends do. She waited to spread the news of her acceptance until she heard her friend’s news. When they celebrated they celebrated together.

When we pack up the minivan in August we will not plot a course to Norton, however. In one week, our daughter’s finely tuned plan turned inside-out. It was not a falling-out with her best friend or even a less-than-the-other guy scholarship offer. She got her dream school and her dream changed.

An acceptance from Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, far from the New England she had dreamed of, clicked something deep down. A hefty scholarship helped, but I don’t think it was the engine that drove this choice.

I always thought that the school in Massachusetts was a little too small, a little too safe for our big dreams daughter. But the passion behind her dream was big, and I didn’t want to defuse it. Besides, I knew this was one choice, of many to come, she would have to make for herself.

She didn’t choose the year she was born in, or the color of her annoyingly curly hair, but when it came to the first most important decision of her young life, one that would chart a course for the rest of her life, she did it herself. I think she did it right.

- Cass Collins