My son is free.

These pieces generally run annually in time for Hanukkah and Christmas.

A year ago I wrote of A Most Extraordinary Year, one which saw my son on the way to prep school and ninth grade in Massachusetts. His decision – he chose Northfield Mount Hermon in north western Massachusetts as his home for the next four years – prompts this year’s column and fills in the gaps.

In the spring Winston and I revisited the two schools he had short listed based on his original visits in November 2015. So compelling did he find the presentation and people at NMH that he decided this would be the place for him. I offered no argument. Any decision which was not totally his would forever rankle in memory. His and mine. Nor did I have any issue with his choice. It was superb in every way and a perfect fit for my boy’s kind and gentle soul.

Winston calls home from Boston with his decision to attend NMH. March 31, 2016.

When your only child moves three thousand miles east from home trepidation abounds, and the first few weeks of transition to his new environment were sleepless ones for his dad. You can never prep well enough for prep school. I should not have worried. NMH, along with the many great private schools in New England, has been at this for some 150 years and, boy, do they know their business. Between academic studies, Acting, Theater and Debate along with a new avocation for cross country running, calls to my nearest and dearest were met with an unexpected “Don’t bother me now dad. I’m busy.” Could there have been a better message?

That academic life at a premier New England school would be challenging goes without saying. This is a preparatory school, after all, with 100% matriculation to college. That is what the student is preparing for. And after a public intermediate school, fine as it was, Winston has some catching up to do. What I did not realize is that his new school’s goal is not merely to challenge the child intellectually, it is also to exhaust him physically, a process which saw Winnie taking to cross-country like a duck to water. Getting to sleep at night is the least of his problems.

Winston competes in the cross country run during Parents’ Weekend against Exeter Academy. NMH got trashed! Exeter’s early finishers in the background.

“You got trashed, Win?”

“Well, dad, what do you expect from the school with the biggest endowment in the nation?”

Where did he get that? You figure it out.

Parents’ Weekend was wonderful. I met the usual cadre of over-ambitious parents, determined to get a return on their investment regardless of the emotional toll on their kids, along with the occasional sports scholarship winner every bit as determined to excel at basketball and a future in reality TV. But of far greater import was the opportunity to meet students and faculty. The first wonderfully self effacing and charming and genuinely kind, the second the ne plus ultra of educators. Teachers at this school teach because they want to not because they have to, and they most certainly do not need a trades union. Many are Ivy League graduates with Oxbridge and London alma maters also well represented. Theirs is a passion, a vocation, a commitment to teaching. The level of care and feeding of the student is why you really want your child attending one of these institutions. And feeding is not just intellectual and athletic, for NMH is renowned as having the finest dining hall of any school or college in the United States!

So as Parents’ Weekend wound down to its inevitable conclusion, we walked over to the library on the beautiful campus and I snapped one last image to remind me of what will be.

Winnie makes his way to the Schauffler Library on a gorgeous fall day in Massachusetts.
Nothing awaits him but opportunity.

My son was free. Free to be his own man, free to make his own friendships, free to make his own decisions and free to set his direction. His fire, to echo Yeats, is well and truly lit.

With Winnie safely ensconced in his new digs, I turned to pursuits more selfish and finally enacted a long considered plan to abandon the Bay Area, home for twenty years, and move to a place I have long loved, Scottsdale, Arizona. This is a throwback to Norman Rockwell’s America where neighbors stop by to chat and crime is a word in the dictionary. And while moving house makes a root canal seem like a fun time by comparison, I reasoned that, as with visits to the dentist, it was best to get it over and done with, so this Christmas finds me in the Arizona desert, infinite vistas at my doorstep accompanied by glorious sunsets and a distinct sense that this is how America once was. Silicon Valley be damned.

All snaps on the Panny GX7.

Click here for an index of all the Biographical pieces.