Yesterday I shared on Facebook that my eldest son M is going to college, and many of you have been so nice to acknowledge this pending rite of passage.For me, however, the moment is bittersweet.
No event this past year that has left me feeling more displaced, more liminal. I am perched on top of a wall separating this reality from that. I see both sides. Neither side can see the other. I belong to neither, and neither belongs to me.
On the one side, I see America: my past, my friends and my family. I see everything I have ever believed in, including the importance of college. While in reality only about a third of all Americans have a B.A. or more, but for better and worse, this is the only the third of America I know. And its not just going to college that the world I know cares about, it’s which brand name you can keep in your pocket and pull out from time to time, a magical calling card that opens all doors and guarantees a life of peace, prosperity, and happiness.
One the other side, here in this tiny strip of land between Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt, 18 year olds go to the army, not to college. This is a rougher neighborhood–a reality that Americans have a hard time accepting.
And anyways, that thing about a brand name you can keep in your pocket and pull out from time to time, a magical calling card that opens all doors and guarantees a life of peace, prosperity, and happiness? That’s bullshit, of course. But no one tells you that when you are a teenager and trying to figure out what’s important. No one tells you that the things that really matter in life, like bravery, resilience and perseverance, like having a good sense of humor and knowing how to cook, are not related to getting into college. But American parents tell their kids college matters. And sometimes they believe us.
The thing is, I don’t live in America right now. I don’t live in a country where college has any particular significance for 18 year olds. It’s all a shrug. Here, all rites of passage connect to the army. Getting your “Tzav Rishon” at 16 and a half, your draft notice, that’s a rite of passage. Going for your first set of army tests to determine your physical profile, and whether or not you are sufficiently fit to serve in combat, that’s a rite of passage. Trying out for the unit that you are most interested in, and then trying out some more, and then trying out some more, and then, if you are fortunate/unfortunate, getting into the unit that you most desire, that is definitely a rite of passage. And of course, most of all, army service is a rite of passage. College will come, but not for a few years, and for an 18 year old, a few years is a distant horizon.
My nephew just go into Unit XXX. That is a tremendous achievement. A breathtaking accomplishment. It makes getting into college, any college, look like small potatoes. He’s going to be spending the next five years learning the ABC’s of warfare–atomic, ballistic and chemical. He’s going to be waking up every morning and learning to do things he never thought he could do, and then doing them again and again. And he’s going to do this for five years, except when he comes home on the weekends to sleep. It’s a terrifying commitment. And its an achievement that means nothing to most of us in America, just like getting into Yale means very little to most Israelis.
But I only moved here 9 months ago, so the whole army obsession still looks
foreign to me. Who wants to glorify warfare? Who wants to send a kid to a unit in the army, any unit, and turn them into a soldier? Who really cares what you do in the army, anyways, as long as you don’t get wounded, PTSD, or killed? And why on earth would anyone walk open-eyed into an environment where getting wounded, PTSD, or killed, is an occupational hazard?
But Israeli parents tell their kids that army matters. And sometimes they believe us.
The first thing you learn at Yale is to say you go to school “in New Haven”. But as final decisions are due, and my Facebook feed fills up with notices of where my friends’ children and my children’s friends are going, I can’t resist the lure of going public.
I give M my Yale ’95 hat…a hat from my 10th reunion that I’ve almost never worn. No self-respecting middle aged mom wears a hat telling the exact year she graduated college. I never wore it in public, but I also never threw it away. Instead, it has sat in the bottom of my hat drawer, waiting for something. Waiting for this, I suppose, for my gangly, floppy haired, child-man son to dig his hands in his pockets and give me a lopsided half grin, the look that says I am embarrassed and and eye roll, Mom, really? You have to post it? Have you asked Dad?
And then in a minute or two his picture is up, up in the virtual universe of forever. Our photo shoot over, M heads out to rejoin his friends at his Mechina, where he lives during the week.
The house is quiet, empty. I walk slowly to my bedroom, a lump rising in my throat.
My bed is filled with a mountain of clean laundry, fresh from the machine. I put on Tangled Up in Blue (TUIB), the Yale folk music group, and remember myself folding laundry in the Trumbull College basement. TUIB of 2020 seems to be singing more or less the same repertoire of songs that they sang 25 years ago.
Why that lump in my throat? I am not sending him into battle. Not this one, my writer, my thinker, my son who sees everything a a little bit differently from everyone else. My son who plays guitar and writes songs and does math for fun and who listens with wide eyes and open ears to all who cross his path. My firstborn will not be a soldier. At least not now. At least not yet.
I’m not sending him into a tank, or a bunker, or a submarine, or even an intelligence unit or a search and rescue unit, like his cousin. No, this one is still pursuing the American dream, whatever that is.
At least Yale isn’t dangerous. The lump in my throat finds it way to my tear ducts. Small, contained drops.
I know the back right corner of the Cross Campus library, where he’ll pour over books late at night. I know the Stacks that he’ll roam through, wondering how so many people could have written so many books, and on so many subjects he never knew existed.
I know the midnight search for secret steam tunnels, and the breakneck joy of putting together a full theatrical production in just a few weeks.
I know the bathroom stall he’ll throw up in, and hope the girls in the hallway don’t know its him in there puking. I know the particular crispness of the New Haven air in the fall, and the soothing smell of cigarette smoke at midnight, even though he never smoked before.
I know that someone he loves will probably die in the next few years, and someone will betray him. I am pretty sure he will make a series of dumb decisions that land him in the Dean’s Office explaining that he just needs an extension, when really he needs 20 hours of sleep and a long hug from his mother.
I know that corner of York and Elm. That’s the corner he’ll stand on, in the rain, without an umbrella, eating a soggy slice of Yorkside pizza, wondering how the beautiful girl in his 19th century poetry class can break up with him so casually.
“I’m just not into it anymore,” she’ll say, looking away, above, anywhere but into his eyes. “Sorry. Really. I am sorry.”
“Into it?” He’ll say, quietly. The raindrops will come harder, and he won’t even flinch. “You mean into me?” And she doesn’t know, and he doesn’t know, that she may have shattered his universe for the next few decades. With a stroke of his cheek she’ll turn and walk away, and he’ll be there in the rain, the pouring rain, holding soggy pizza, and feeling that at least with all that rain, no one can tell that he’s crying.
I fold the shirts and pants and sweaters, straightening out the creases of time. I set the clothes in neat piles. Bright College Years. Boola Boola. Bulldog, bulldog, bow wow wow. Ahead lies heartbreak and confusion and a universe of infinite possibility. I am so sorry, my baby. And I am so envious.
Pomegranate Dreams 