It’s another Sunday of triangulation, the three of us in the living room, one working because his work overflows, one studying and completing homework because his school schedule is intense, and one who should be writing but can’t really focus on much of anything but filling out mock-ups of the Common App and scraping the Reddit barrel for gleanings of college application process wisdom.

I knew this fall, the boy’s last in school, would be tough, that not only would his workload be huge (with a total of five Advanced Placement classes this semester—his choice, not ours), but that the extra work of applying to college would toss us all into a tizzy. It’s delicate writing about it here, given that I am a parental participant, a quasi-bystander. The process is the boy’s, with us as prodders and cheerleaders. Complications emerge. Stress levels rise. Sleep suffers.

I’m not sure I would believe the intensity if I weren’t living it, and I may be at a loss for how to explain how stressful it all is. Take one child, seventeen years of love, connection, and investment. Our family is like a gilded tapestry, tightly knitted, the boy our the golden thread, the flash of light, against the dusky tones of his parents. Add in our histories, a (long-ago) year of mysterious illness, pets come and gone, and mix in a mixed-bag pandemic—we are as one.

Next year at this time, he will not be in this house. OK. This I can mainly accept, knowing it will take time to adjust. I can even accept that we will not know until spring (at the earliest) where the boy will be going to school. It’s just these months of focus, grades, test scores, essays, showcasing the best of him, the most authentic of him, with a kid who hates the process. This against the anxious knowledge that change is ahead. When he is tugged loose from the family fabric, what will happen? What awaits him? How will we adapt?

But these are higher level questions. Now is nag, love, support, accept. In four months, the application process will be done. And all will be fine. He will be fine. We will be fine.