Familyhood (15 page)

“Oh, Bosco! I'm so sorry! I didn't see you there!”

“I'll move.”

I feel bad for Bosco sometimes. The least demanding, most accepting, most even-keeled member of the family receives, for the most part, the least of our attention. He thrives on our scraps—scraps of time, scraps of contact, scraps of food. Like the best of us, like the kind and sainted, Bosco accepts what we have to give him without complaint.

We probably don't deserve such a good dog. I can only imagine what Bosco's friends must think of us. I bet they tell Bosco he could do better, that he ought to leave us. I can't really argue with them. But he works through it. I'm just glad he has someone to talk to.

AFTER WE COME HOME
from the vet, I give Bosco an extra portion of dog food. And a muffin. And a little piece of steak. We sit out in the backyard. I watch him watch-but-not-chase squirrels. The squirrels scurry to and fro, building their mini-city. We sit there, enthralled. I wonder out loud if the influx of squirrels means some other group will be moving out. Perhaps the gophers. Bosco shrugs. He doesn't know either.

It's moments like this that make me proud to be his father.

Take My Kid. Please.

O
ur neighborhood
has a terrific public elementary school. So good, in fact, that when you enroll, the district literally sends an investigator to your house to confirm that you indeed live where you say you do; people outside the area have been known to lie about living here just so their kids can go to this school.

Fortunately, we didn't have to lie. We lucked out, living in the correct square-mile area. We sent both our boys to the school, and they loved it—and even shared many of the same teachers. It was a great experience.

But as our younger son was about to graduate—the school only goes to fifth grade—we had a big decision to make as to where he would go next. The public
middle
school of our particular district was not as stellar as the elementary school. So, as much as we were initially against the idea, we treaded into the murky world of applying to private schools.

This is an exhausting and dispiriting journey for which I was wholly unprepared. The amount of planning and plotting and positioning and paperwork that goes into applying to private schools is staggering. And unsettling. Once you enter the arena, you are not only a stranger in a strange land, scavenging for morsels of information and access, but the jungle mentality permeates your every move. Other families—only days earlier your dear friends—are now the enemy, as they too plot to grab one of the precious few available openings. (Sometimes these enemies can throw you off balance with a disarming display of benevolence and shared information. “You know, if you get the applications in before next Monday, you get called in for the interview sooner, which increases your chances of admission.” Sure, it's helpful. But don't let your guard down; there are still only so many spots available, and if their kid gets in, that's one less chance for your kid. Remember that!)

STEP ONE.
Determine which schools you want to apply to. This will be the last time you feel remotely like you have the upper hand, because the moment that application is in, the tables turn and you are at the beck and call of the admissions board, and for the sake of your children's future, you will shamelessly jump through any and all hoops asked of you by these people.

Step Two. Fill out the absurdly intricate application packets they send you, with all the idiosyncrasies of their particular admissions process—which can vary immensely, but all involve a labyrinth of forms, questionnaires, and requests for
more
forms and questionnaires and records from previous schools, the execution of which could be so easily mishandled, presenting you a myriad of ways to drop the ball and prevent your child from advancing his or her education—the one your child would have gotten had you not misread Form 17A, misplaced Request for Transcript 24, or had you seen the part where they ask for the kid to submit an original haiku.

AN IRONIC TWIST
of the whole ordeal is that while, theoretically, nothing could be more unifying for a mother and father than their joint attempt to advance their child's cause, in reality, nothing could be more stressful or chisel away more relentlessly at the foundation of an otherwise vibrant family. There were many moments during the application process when my wife and I were genuinely ready to walk away from the whole thing—the school, the marriage, and the will to live . . .
Everything
.

What was most jolting—and what I was least prepared for—was realizing that we were, for the first time, presenting our child for the approval of others.
We
know our children are extraordinary; an objective third party, however, might be . . . objective. This would not work in our favor. It becomes, therefore, our job to shine our children up and polish them, repackage and re-brand them before taking them to market—all in the hopes that they will meet with the approval of people we have never even met but already strongly dislike.

Filling out those forms is an intensely sobering and emotionally draining experience. I remember vacillating between deep pools of insecurity and abject resentment. On the one hand, we worried that we had utterly failed as parents and set our children on a path to almost certain failure. (Nobody wants their kids judged unfairly, but I wasn't that keen on having them judged
fairly
either.)

And at the same time, I was offended at the insensitivity and audacity of their questions.

“How would you describe your child's intellectual interests?”

I could try to impress: “He's just finished reading all of Marcel Proust.”

Or I could be honest. “He's
ten
! He doesn't have any!”

Another bad question: “How does your child respond to direction?”

I chortled. “Are you kidding? He
hates
it. I mean, he's not a fire-starter or anything, but he's not what you'd call a
big fan
of authority. A good kid, don't get me wrong. But if there's a laugh to be had, particularly at the expense of any figure of authority, he's going to take the shot. In fact, he
lives
for it.”

Upon reflection, I thought our son's chances might be better served if I perhaps massaged the truth more artfully.

“My son has never had a discipline problem. On the contrary; while he often engages in tomfoolery, if not outright hijinks, he virtually never gets caught, for which his mother and I are both enormously proud.”

Or, as an alternative: “Our son recognizes authority. And like all good, patriotic Americans, he is often compelled to question it.”

These were both shot down by my more levelheaded wife.

SOMETIMES,
these application questions were shockingly ignorant and ill-conceived.

“What would you describe as your child's greatest academic weakness?”

Did they think I was going to tell them that? Did they really expect me to rat out my own kid? To “The Man”? What's wrong with these people?! I put down, “How about this:
You
take him, watch him for a couple of years, then
you
tell
me.
See how good
you
are at eyeballing the problem areas.”

But I chickened out and deleted it.

Even when they invite you to be positive, the temptation to exaggerate is hard to resist.

“What are your child's academic strengths?”

Okay, glad you asked. “Our son's primary academic strength is his enormous untapped potential, much the way we as a society have yet to fully tap alternative, green energies, such as wind and solar power—which, by the way, our son shows tremendous interest in developing. He often speaks of his wish to save our nation from continued dependence on foreign oil.”

Some applications are more encouraging than others. The nice ones give you ample room to expound upon your child's virtues in your own style, uncensored and unrestrained. “Describe in detail all the great things about your child.”

Are you kidding? How much time do we have? Pull up a chair. Call home, tell them you're going to be late—we're going to be here awhile.

And then I started babbling on for pages about the virtues of my child.

“Oh, well . . . he's funny, he's bright, he's inquisitive, he's intuitive, he's got a killer smile, he's sweet . . . Why, one time, we were at our friend's house, and he saw this little turtle who was stuck in a—”

“Um, honey,” my wife wisely interrupted. “It's a
school,
not your mother we're trying to impress here.”

“Got ya,” I acknowledged sheepishly. “Sorry. Got a little carried away.”

I was appreciative, though, of the schools that were more diplomatic and nurturing in the wording of their questions. Instead of, for example, asking you to spill the beans and “list your child's weaknesses,” they might ask, “In what areas of your child's education do you see the most opportunity for improvement?” Well, that's different. Who could be against their child improving? So I begin to list:

“Well, he doesn't always pay attention, his work habits are shabby, frankly. He never studies an iota more than legally required . . .”

“You really want to tell them all that?” my wife asks.

“Okay, how about this?” I say, pitching another angle—the “Truthful But Still Sucking Up” approach:

“He does very well in school when he tries, manages to do okay when he
doesn't
try, and he could do even better if he tried harder at your fine school.”

This was shot down as well.

What we came to learn, with a bit of practice, was that with just the right terminology and turn of phrase, every “opportunity for growth” can be neatly spun into an incontrovertible “positive.” For example, “He gets easily bored” becomes “He really blossoms when actively engaged.” How about that, huh?

“Hates homework and tends to stare into space” transforms into “Learns as much from interpersonal activity and the world around him as he would from conventional texts.” See what I did there?

“Once kicked a kid for looking at him funny” becomes “A respected leader of his peers.”

I'm telling you: Once you get the hang of it, it's a cinch. Just a dollop of creative writing and a pinch of sheer linguistic daring, and suddenly your kid looks like exactly the kind of kid they'd be crazy not to take.

“HE MIGHT NOT GET ACCEPTED,”
my wife felt obliged to point out, seriously dampening my fledgling optimism.

Honestly, that had never even occurred to me—the idea that in the end, some school might not welcome him. I mean, yes, I understand it's a competitive field, but with our newly sparkling résumé-writing skills, and with his natural charm and killer smile, how could they
not
take him?

“You're kidding, right?” my wife said to me, holding her head cocked at that special angle that is her encouragement for others to think harder and remember. I had, in fact, totally forgotten that we already went through this exact thing with our older son—only five years earlier. I think I blocked out the memory.

In fact, that first go-round was, in some ways, even more excruciating, because our older son had specific challenges that made the choice of middle school that much more critical. We did extensive research and cherry-picked a few very specific, very specialized schools that we thought would be best for him. When they each, for various reasons, turned us down, I think I transitioned from “Ouch” to “The hell with them” so instantly and thoroughly that I now couldn't even recall the horror of it all. (The human spirit can be impressively self-sustaining sometimes.)

In our older son's case, we elected to homeschool him for a while, which was great until he eventually—and understandably—decided he would prefer to attend school with other kids, especially other kids who were
girls
, which was not something we offered in our home academy.

We have since found a terrific school for him where he thrives magnificently. (And while I'm not proud of this, not a day goes by that I don't think about the schools that rejected us and wish them—if not
ill
—at least a severe case of
painful remorse
for having passed over the opportunity to spend time with our son.)

Now, a scant few years down the road, here we were—doing it again. I decided that I would learn from the first experience and fortify myself with the knowledge that, come what may, we would prevail. Everything works out in the end. But let's at least give it our best shot!

So into the cold waters we plunged. We determined to do everything possible to get our ten-year-old accepted to the schools of our choice; we enrolled him in a four-month preparatory course, hoping to maximize his performance on the grueling standardized test they use to weed out your children. We gathered his transcripts, asked for letters of recommendation, wrote the essays,
re-wrote
the essays, had our son write his own mandatory self-evaluating essays . . . We did everything to the very best of our abilities and were starting to feel pretty darn good about the whole thing.

The morning of the foreboding three-hour standardized test, as he reluctantly put on his shoes and packed his pencils and erasable pens and scratch paper and snacks, my sweet (and normally unflappable) ten-year-old quietly let fly his simple but deeply seated fear.

“What if they don't accept me?”

Oh, how I hated these people! Why would they design a system that causes this perfectly confident, wonderful child to feel this kind of self-doubt?

Though, deep inside, I knew it wasn't really their fault. This is what life is. To be alive means you're going to grow, you're going to move forward. And that will necessarily involve making an effort.
Trying,
which by definition involves, if not failure, then at least the
risk
of failure. And rejection, and heartbreak. Ain't no way around it.

But the pain of your children being rejected—and witnessing
them
experience that rejection—is as brutal a part of parenting as there is. It taps into every skill set and deep well of character strength you hope you have. You ache to not only soothe their bruised hearts, but in the process, hopefully, also shed some light on the ways of the world that might make the next inevitable disappointment easier to swallow.

More than anything, it was his simple use of the word “accept” that killed me. It was the very word we had bandied about for months—“Hope they
accept
us.” “Think they'll
accept
us?” “When do they let us know if they
accept
us or not?” “The idiots better
accept
us!” and so on.

But when my son said it, it sounded so painfully openhearted and vulnerable. “What if they don't accept me?”

I remembered a time when he had asked the same thing about
me.
I had just written a script I was really excited about and submitted it to some studios to see what “they” had to say. Its fate was no longer in my control. And it is not fun having the fate of something precious to you in the hands of others.