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Parents cheer, cry as undergrads head to college
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BY: ELLEN SCHUR BROWN Editor, Family Section
Susan Kahan of Beachwood has been weepy since February.
The tears peaked at Beachwood High School’s graduation ceremony in June when her youngest child, Caitlyn, walked across the stage to receive her diploma. When Caitlyn heads to The Ohio State University this month, Kahan and her husband David enter a new stage of life: “empty nesters.”
“It sucks,” admits Kahan.
Kahan’s older daughter, Lauren, will be a junior at OSU, so the girls will be together. But sending the youngest out of the nest, Kahan admits, requires extra tissues.
“With your older one it feels like she should be graduating, like she’s old enough. But my baby is way too young. It doesn’t seem possible that she could be graduating and leaving,” she says. “The thought of it is very odd.”
The irony is Kahan is a mental health counselor in private practice n and some of her clients are going through the same empty nest scenario. In sessions, she helps clients move on, she says, and keeps her own emotions at bay.
Following her advice to others, Kahan plans to visit childhood friends who live out of town. And OSU is close, so she’ll probably visit her girls there every few months.
The Machers
“I’m not doing well at all,” admits Wendy Macher. She and her husband Dr. Jerry Macher take their youngest son, Nathan, to Cornell this fall. She confesses she is “so close to tears all the time” that she has gone into therapy.
“I keep wondering how it’s going to be having no one at home. I’m so used to him bounding down the stairs and saying, ‘Hi Mom! How are you?’ No one’s going to ask me that,” she says wistfully. Her husband, an eye surgeon at Eye Centers of Ohio in Canton, will keep going to work, and his life won’t change much.
Wendy has been through this before with daughter Arielle, now in graduate school at Yale, and Aaron, a sophomore at Harvard. But this time is very different: She and Nathan are especially close because of the time they spent together commuting from their home in Akron to Fuchs Mizrachi School.
“I keep telling myself I’m giving him the opportunity of a lifetime,” she says. “There are Jewish kids and kosher food” and vibrant Jewish communities at all her children’s schools, she says. Arielle called for a recipe n she’s having Shabbos lunch for 11 people.
A registered nurse, Wendy plans on volunteering, perhaps at Akron Children’s Hospital, so that she’ll have the flexibility to travel with her husband or to be with her children. A trip for Succot to Yale is already in the works.
The Feuers
Sherry and Ira Feuer of Pepper Pike are sending their oldest daughter, Jenny, to the University of Michigan this fall. Sherry knows Jenny is “more than ready to leave,” but this isn’t like a finite summer program or trip.
“Jenny’s very independent, so I thought I could handle it,” says Sherry, but seeing Jenny in a college registration line, the floodgates opened. Her husband Ira, too, is having a tough time: “His queen is leaving.”
The Feuers, members of Bethaynu synagogue, are thrilled Jenny chose Michigan. “It’s a great fit” with a great Hillel and a large Jewish community, says Sherry. And it’s only a three-hour drive from home.
“My day revolves around being home for my kids; that’s going to change now,” says Sherry. She’s planning to volunteer more, keeping too busy to shed tears. She’ll still have her son Nick, a senior at Hawken, at home. but she’s going to miss Jenny and her friends “just hanging out.”
The Josephs
Ellison and Jon Joseph of Solon aren’t sad that their middle child, Michael, is leaving for Bradley University in Peoria, Ill. n they’re excited for him.
“This is going to be an incredible opportunity for him,” says Ellison Joseph. “This will open his eyes to so many things he doesn’t know are out there,” she says, listing clubs, fraternities and activities which were absent from his small high school, Lawrence in Sagamore Hills.
Joseph concedes that it’s harder to say goodbye to her son than it was to part with her daughter Leah, a graduate of The Boston Conservatory who now lives in Manhattan.
“With a boy you worry more about his day-to-day needs: Is he going to get his laundry done? Will he get to his classes? Will he make friends? Michael is extremely independent, but that motherly piece of me worries. I didn’t worry about that with my daughter.”
With only Max, a sophomore at Solon High School, at home, the house will be a lot quieter. “It’ll be an adjustment,” says Joseph. In the meantime, she fills her days with meaningful volunteer activities at the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland and on the board of Siegal College.
“I am really close to my children, but this is ‘roots and wings,’” explains Joseph. “This is what we try to give our children, and this is what they’re supposed to do.”
The Goldfarbs
As he was flying home from a business trip, it suddenly hit Steve Goldfarb: His daughter Stephanie had graduated from Shaker Heights High School and was going on to Yale University.
“I was thinking about the things we’ve done over the years n traveling and school events, spending weekends on the boat as a family,” he says with a sigh.
The pre-prom party for Stephanie’s friends, most of whom he’s known since “they were four feet tall,” made him realize they’re all-but-gone already.
“They’re so much more accomplished at this age than my wife Gail and I were when we graduated from college,” he says. “These kids work hard, and they have a pretty good social life, too.” He added that Shaker has been “the greatest choice we ever could have made. The teachers are better than college professors I had.”
Stephanie’s twin sisters, Samantha and Tori, are struggling with the realignment in their family. Goldfarb expects more sobbing as the time gets closer to Stephanie’s leaving. The family plans to drive to New Haven, Conn., at the end of August to help Stephanie settle in.
The Overbekes
Kathy and Ned Overbeke of Orange have mixed feelings about delivering their youngest daughter, Romy, to Bard College in upstate New York.
“I went back to school, working on my doctorate in business management at Case Weatherhead, so I have been extraordinarily busy,” says Kathy. “Having one less person around the house will make my life easier.
“On the other hand, Romy and (my oldest) Grace are more than just children. They’re good company, and I am going to miss them terribly.” However, she will NOT miss worrying about where they are, what they are doing, and if they going to come home at a decent time.
The Overbekes aren’t quite done worrying, however. Ned has been on the phone with the college complaining about Romy’s living arrangements n in a trailer instead of the beautiful dorms the college is known for n and hopefully, getting a few other things straightened out through several layers of bureaucracy. “I’m far too emotional,” he admits.
They’ve been through this once before with Grace, who will be a senior at Wesleyan.
Kathy is getting lots of advice on her new, empty nest stage of life. “Some people say it’s wonderful to reconnect with your spouse; others say it’s devastating,” she says.
Kathy ends the conversation on a light note: “There’s the old joke about the rabbis debating when life begins, and one rabbi answers, ‘when the kids go off to college.’”
ebrown@cjn.org
Having a child leave home is a major life-cycle event in any family; doesn’t this milestone deserve more than a ritual trip to Bed, Bath & Beyond?
Some parents are creating new Jewish celebrations and ceremonies to put a religious seal on this transition.
Here are some ways to bring spirituality into your goodbyes, suggested on the website ritualwell.org:
• Paula Pepperstone details a two-part ceremony; a Havdalah ceremony for leaving home and a chanukat ha’cheder (mezuzah) ceremony for starting anew at college.
Havdalah traditionally marks a separation, of Shabbat from the rest of the week, but the candles and spices can also mark a transition from child to young adult or from parents’ home to dorm. Light a new havdalah candle that your student can keep in the dorm (if candles are allowed there).
Consecrate the new dorm room (ha’cheder) with a mezuzah and say the welcoming prayers. (The mezuzah ceremony is typically called chanukat ha’bayit, consecrating the home, but it’s OK to improvise.)
• Rabbi Arthur Gross Schaefer, a teaching rabbi in California, suggests planting a tree in your backyard with a ceremony and songs or prayers. Tending the tree can stand as substitute for tending the child who is away.
• Marcia Cohn Spiegel proposes breaking a plate, as families do to celebrate an engagement. Perform a symbolic cleaning, or donate clothing or toys. Burning, tearing, cleaning, casting out, breaking and cleansing can allow us to do symbolically what we are doing in our lives, she says.
• Recommended Torah passages about leaving home and other suggested prayers and meditations are detailed on This Ritual Life at clal.org.
• Create an individual ritual using Jewish traditions such as gifts to charity, special foods, going to the mikvah, or reciting the parents’ blessing over the child. A festive meal, such as a graduation party, can become a Jewish ritual in this rite of passage. Invite siblings to retell favorite stories.
Use ritual objects like a family Kiddush cup in your service, wrap the children in a tallit, or stand under your own marriage chupah.
• Parents might want to read (or write) their advice about the foundation they built for the child they are sending off. End with the Shehechayanu, a prayer thanking God for allowing you to reach this day.
Who would’ve thought?
E.S.Brown
The tears peaked at Beachwood High School’s graduation ceremony in June when her youngest child, Caitlyn, walked across the stage to receive her diploma. When Caitlyn heads to The Ohio State University this month, Kahan and her husband David enter a new stage of life: “empty nesters.”
“It sucks,” admits Kahan.
Kahan’s older daughter, Lauren, will be a junior at OSU, so the girls will be together. But sending the youngest out of the nest, Kahan admits, requires extra tissues.
“With your older one it feels like she should be graduating, like she’s old enough. But my baby is way too young. It doesn’t seem possible that she could be graduating and leaving,” she says. “The thought of it is very odd.”
The irony is Kahan is a mental health counselor in private practice n and some of her clients are going through the same empty nest scenario. In sessions, she helps clients move on, she says, and keeps her own emotions at bay.
Following her advice to others, Kahan plans to visit childhood friends who live out of town. And OSU is close, so she’ll probably visit her girls there every few months.
The Machers
“I’m not doing well at all,” admits Wendy Macher. She and her husband Dr. Jerry Macher take their youngest son, Nathan, to Cornell this fall. She confesses she is “so close to tears all the time” that she has gone into therapy.
“I keep wondering how it’s going to be having no one at home. I’m so used to him bounding down the stairs and saying, ‘Hi Mom! How are you?’ No one’s going to ask me that,” she says wistfully. Her husband, an eye surgeon at Eye Centers of Ohio in Canton, will keep going to work, and his life won’t change much.
Wendy has been through this before with daughter Arielle, now in graduate school at Yale, and Aaron, a sophomore at Harvard. But this time is very different: She and Nathan are especially close because of the time they spent together commuting from their home in Akron to Fuchs Mizrachi School.
“I keep telling myself I’m giving him the opportunity of a lifetime,” she says. “There are Jewish kids and kosher food” and vibrant Jewish communities at all her children’s schools, she says. Arielle called for a recipe n she’s having Shabbos lunch for 11 people.
A registered nurse, Wendy plans on volunteering, perhaps at Akron Children’s Hospital, so that she’ll have the flexibility to travel with her husband or to be with her children. A trip for Succot to Yale is already in the works.
The Feuers
Sherry and Ira Feuer of Pepper Pike are sending their oldest daughter, Jenny, to the University of Michigan this fall. Sherry knows Jenny is “more than ready to leave,” but this isn’t like a finite summer program or trip.
“Jenny’s very independent, so I thought I could handle it,” says Sherry, but seeing Jenny in a college registration line, the floodgates opened. Her husband Ira, too, is having a tough time: “His queen is leaving.”
The Feuers, members of Bethaynu synagogue, are thrilled Jenny chose Michigan. “It’s a great fit” with a great Hillel and a large Jewish community, says Sherry. And it’s only a three-hour drive from home.
“My day revolves around being home for my kids; that’s going to change now,” says Sherry. She’s planning to volunteer more, keeping too busy to shed tears. She’ll still have her son Nick, a senior at Hawken, at home. but she’s going to miss Jenny and her friends “just hanging out.”
The Josephs
Ellison and Jon Joseph of Solon aren’t sad that their middle child, Michael, is leaving for Bradley University in Peoria, Ill. n they’re excited for him.
“This is going to be an incredible opportunity for him,” says Ellison Joseph. “This will open his eyes to so many things he doesn’t know are out there,” she says, listing clubs, fraternities and activities which were absent from his small high school, Lawrence in Sagamore Hills.
Joseph concedes that it’s harder to say goodbye to her son than it was to part with her daughter Leah, a graduate of The Boston Conservatory who now lives in Manhattan.
“With a boy you worry more about his day-to-day needs: Is he going to get his laundry done? Will he get to his classes? Will he make friends? Michael is extremely independent, but that motherly piece of me worries. I didn’t worry about that with my daughter.”
With only Max, a sophomore at Solon High School, at home, the house will be a lot quieter. “It’ll be an adjustment,” says Joseph. In the meantime, she fills her days with meaningful volunteer activities at the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland and on the board of Siegal College.
“I am really close to my children, but this is ‘roots and wings,’” explains Joseph. “This is what we try to give our children, and this is what they’re supposed to do.”
The Goldfarbs
As he was flying home from a business trip, it suddenly hit Steve Goldfarb: His daughter Stephanie had graduated from Shaker Heights High School and was going on to Yale University.
“I was thinking about the things we’ve done over the years n traveling and school events, spending weekends on the boat as a family,” he says with a sigh.
The pre-prom party for Stephanie’s friends, most of whom he’s known since “they were four feet tall,” made him realize they’re all-but-gone already.
“They’re so much more accomplished at this age than my wife Gail and I were when we graduated from college,” he says. “These kids work hard, and they have a pretty good social life, too.” He added that Shaker has been “the greatest choice we ever could have made. The teachers are better than college professors I had.”
Stephanie’s twin sisters, Samantha and Tori, are struggling with the realignment in their family. Goldfarb expects more sobbing as the time gets closer to Stephanie’s leaving. The family plans to drive to New Haven, Conn., at the end of August to help Stephanie settle in.
The Overbekes
Kathy and Ned Overbeke of Orange have mixed feelings about delivering their youngest daughter, Romy, to Bard College in upstate New York.
“I went back to school, working on my doctorate in business management at Case Weatherhead, so I have been extraordinarily busy,” says Kathy. “Having one less person around the house will make my life easier.
“On the other hand, Romy and (my oldest) Grace are more than just children. They’re good company, and I am going to miss them terribly.” However, she will NOT miss worrying about where they are, what they are doing, and if they going to come home at a decent time.
The Overbekes aren’t quite done worrying, however. Ned has been on the phone with the college complaining about Romy’s living arrangements n in a trailer instead of the beautiful dorms the college is known for n and hopefully, getting a few other things straightened out through several layers of bureaucracy. “I’m far too emotional,” he admits.
They’ve been through this once before with Grace, who will be a senior at Wesleyan.
Kathy is getting lots of advice on her new, empty nest stage of life. “Some people say it’s wonderful to reconnect with your spouse; others say it’s devastating,” she says.
Kathy ends the conversation on a light note: “There’s the old joke about the rabbis debating when life begins, and one rabbi answers, ‘when the kids go off to college.’”
ebrown@cjn.org
Having a child leave home is a major life-cycle event in any family; doesn’t this milestone deserve more than a ritual trip to Bed, Bath & Beyond?
Some parents are creating new Jewish celebrations and ceremonies to put a religious seal on this transition.
Here are some ways to bring spirituality into your goodbyes, suggested on the website ritualwell.org:
• Paula Pepperstone details a two-part ceremony; a Havdalah ceremony for leaving home and a chanukat ha’cheder (mezuzah) ceremony for starting anew at college.
Havdalah traditionally marks a separation, of Shabbat from the rest of the week, but the candles and spices can also mark a transition from child to young adult or from parents’ home to dorm. Light a new havdalah candle that your student can keep in the dorm (if candles are allowed there).
Consecrate the new dorm room (ha’cheder) with a mezuzah and say the welcoming prayers. (The mezuzah ceremony is typically called chanukat ha’bayit, consecrating the home, but it’s OK to improvise.)
• Rabbi Arthur Gross Schaefer, a teaching rabbi in California, suggests planting a tree in your backyard with a ceremony and songs or prayers. Tending the tree can stand as substitute for tending the child who is away.
• Marcia Cohn Spiegel proposes breaking a plate, as families do to celebrate an engagement. Perform a symbolic cleaning, or donate clothing or toys. Burning, tearing, cleaning, casting out, breaking and cleansing can allow us to do symbolically what we are doing in our lives, she says.
• Recommended Torah passages about leaving home and other suggested prayers and meditations are detailed on This Ritual Life at clal.org.
• Create an individual ritual using Jewish traditions such as gifts to charity, special foods, going to the mikvah, or reciting the parents’ blessing over the child. A festive meal, such as a graduation party, can become a Jewish ritual in this rite of passage. Invite siblings to retell favorite stories.
Use ritual objects like a family Kiddush cup in your service, wrap the children in a tallit, or stand under your own marriage chupah.
• Parents might want to read (or write) their advice about the foundation they built for the child they are sending off. End with the Shehechayanu, a prayer thanking God for allowing you to reach this day.
Who would’ve thought?
E.S.Brown
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