Turning your child over to a university as a newly minted freshman isn't easy for any parent. Turning your university over to your child turns out to be equally challenging, as I've discovered in the months since my son, Michael, decided he wanted to attend Stanford.
Now that he has migrated from New York and is installed at Florence Moore Hall as a member of the Class of 2003, I can look back at the last year with a mixture of bewilderment and bemusement. From the campus tours to the filling out of applications to his arrival at Stanford in September, the whole enterprise sometimes seemed as exhausting and exhilarating for me as it did for Michael.
Michael's goal was to find a college he liked and to be admitted to it. My aim was to let him find his own way, even if that did not include Stanford, but to be sure he knew enough about Stanford to make an informed choice. Or, to put it in more concrete terms, I wanted to drive him down Palm Drive on a warm, sunny afternoon in January before he decided to apply only to colleges in New England.
Actually, I had been driving Michael down Palm Drive with my wife, Felicity Barringer, '72, since he was three months old. I suppose in an informal way, the many visits from the East Coast to our alma mater were designed in part to give Michael and his younger brother, Gregory, an appealing glimpse of the campus where we met, developed a love for the West and began our careers in journalism. Encouraging the boys to go to Stanford was not the objective, but I'm sure our affection for the University was not hard for them to discern.
I realized how narrow the line is between affection and indoctrination when the college search began in earnest. As we visited campuses across the country, I did my best to offer nonpartisan advice. I assured him the academic program at the University of Chicago was excellent and that Princeton had a long tradition of offering undergraduates the opportunity to work with senior faculty members. I even acknowledged that the University of California-Berkeley was one of America's great universities. But when we strolled onto the Quad at Stanford late one afternoon, I could feel my objectivity slipping. To correct for the bias, I skipped my usual exclamations about the beauty of the place and spent the rest of the day nearly mute. I was determined that he not feel obliged to apply just to please his father.
I can't say I was unhappy when Michael settled on Stanford as his first choice, but I soon understood that my relationship with the University had reached a critical and highly volatile point. In theory, I recognized that many alumni children do not get accepted. I knew in principle that rejection ought not poison my attitude about the University. But as Michael mailed off his application for early admission last October, I had a gut feeling that all the Stanford T-shirts, shorts and hats I had showered on the kids over the years might soon be headed for the Goodwill box.
As we awaited the verdict, Michael was uncharacteristically subdued. He braced for disappointment by announcing that he was certain he would be rejected. Being turned down by a college is never pleasant, but the prospect of being turned away by the school your mother and father attended and frequently extolled must have seemed especially grim. I also thought about the equation from Stanford's viewpoint. How hard it must be for the University to say no to the children of devoted alumni.
There were plenty of cheers and hugs when the big white envelope arrived in December with "Congratulations" emblazoned across the back. Now the really hard part for me was beginning -- joint ownership of the Farm. I found relinquishing control harder than I expected. In fact, I'm not sure I fully appreciated the need to do so until Felicity, who is wiser in these matters than I, dryly noted that Michael ought to have the chance to discover his own Stanford.
I'm still working on it. Even if he wanted to, Michael can't duplicate my experiences at Stanford, which is probably just as well. Education in the late 1960s was subordinated to political activism. I spent many more hours at the Stanford Daily than I did in a classroom. In doing so, I found a spouse and a profession, which isn't bad for an extracurricular activity. Still, I hope Michael, whose interests run to English literature, biology, jazz and basketball, will delve more searchingly in the course catalog than I did.
But the urge to show him my Stanford, the magical place between the Foothills and the Bay that opened new intellectual and geographic vistas for me, was almost overpowering as we rolled onto campus in September. Our cross-country drive was intended mostly to give father and son a last chance for communion before Michael left the family embrace, but I slipped in visits to Yosemite and Fallen Leaf Lake to introduce him to the Sierra country I explored as a Stanford student. The first day in the Bay Area, we drove up to Skyline Drive. Had there been more time, I might have taken Michael to Big Sur, Muir Woods and the cliffs at Point Reyes. I would have hiked with Michael in the Foothills and shown him the quiet places at Stanford where Felicity and I lost ourselves in conversation. I was tempted to tell him about the Big Game bonfires and the heartbreaking losses to USC.
I might have taken him down to History Corner and told him about the enlightening courses I took from Gordon Craig, Gordon Wright and Bart Bernstein. I thought of telling him how students had seized the Old Union, the Applied Electronics Lab and Encina Hall to protest the Vietnam War. In a moment of weakness, I even considered showing him the Daily office. Of course, he had seen many of these places and heard some of these stories in earlier visits, but now that he was on the brink of becoming a Stanford student himself, it all seemed different. Felicity's admonition came to mind, and I quickly turned the car toward the Stanford Shopping Center so Michael could buy some hangers and a soap dish.
The toughest day for me was the last, the day he checked into Florence Moore, the day I finally placed him in the hands of Stanford. There were new friends for him to make, new places to visit, new horizons that I knew he would reach without Felicity and me showing him the way. A wave of melancholy washed over me. But as the hours passed and the time of our parting neared, I saw that the greatest gift I could give Michael was to hug him tightly and bid him farewell.
Late that afternoon distant memories were awakened as the tintinnabulation of the Hoover Tower carillon summoned Michael, his new classmates and their parents to the Quad for Convocation. The sounding of the bells, the startlingly bright sunshine and azure sky suddenly brought back the mixture of excitement and fear I felt as I walked across campus to attend my own convocation in 1966. I couldn't recall what President Wally Sterling said that day in Frost Amphitheater, but I remembered him and his faculty colleagues resplendent in their academic robes, much like Gerhard Casper and his companions on this day. I summoned up once again the realization -- at once so sobering and so electrifying -- that my years at home were ending and my life as an adult was beginning.
Now it's Michael's turn. When we spoke by phone several days after I left campus, he described how he and a group of classmates had climbed the Foothills by flashlight one night and talked about what they dreamed of doing at Stanford. The thought of it made me smile.
Philip Taubman, '70, lives in Manhattan, where he coordinates national security and foreign commentary for the New York Times editorial page.
